What is up with U.S. retail gasoline deliveries? | Hacker News Reader

What is up with U.S. retail gasoline deliveries?

eia.gov

63 pointsngvrnd35 comments

Looks to me like they split it up into retail sales by gas stations owned by the refiner, and wholesale sales for resale.

Most sales are wholesale - http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&...

Going to take a wild guess and say that a refinery sold some gas stations or somehow a bunch of sales got reclassified from retail to wholesale.

See definitions http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/TblDefs/pet_cons_refmg_tbldef2.a...

If you think about it 25m gallons per day is not the right number for the USA, it's like 0.1 gallons per person order of magnitude, 10x that seems more reasonable, you also have to count all the public transportation, trucks etc.

If you hie over to FRED and look at retail sales from gasoline stations (which also includes candy bars, lottery tickets, etc. and is in dollars, not gallons), you will also see there was no recent massive drop -

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES4244700001

edit: Ack! that's employment at gas stations. Here is retail sales at gas stations -

http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/cenret/nrt447sa

the human mind is truly a rationalizing machine - when you look hard enough for a reason you will always find it, even when the data is bad.

That was my conclusion as well, this seems to be a more realistic representation of consumption: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&...

Although its not easy to tell, the EIA's site could use some improvements in terms of clearly defining what the data displayed represents.

That data set isn't entirely helpful for addressing questions about U.S. retail gasoline consumption. "Petroleum products", as defined by the EIA, include "heating oils; gasoline, diesel and jet fuels; lubricants; asphalt; ethane, propane, and butane; and many other products used for their energy or chemical content" [1].

[1] http://www.eia.gov/tools/glossary/?id=petroleum

Exxon exited retail largely starting in 2008: http://articles.cnn.com/2008-06-12/us/exxon.mobil_1_exxonmob...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/06/12/us-exxon-idUSN1238...

Most of them just closed, others we sold, 2,220 in total. I remember around the election or before all mobile stations in my area going away. They either closed or became independent or remodeled into QuickTrips and other brands. Most of them closing due to gas prices at the time and the economy.

Possibly the dynamics of this contributed to a changed supply market since they were so big?

Average vehicle fuel economy hit its all-time high [1], and there's been a massive cut-back in how much people drive [2]. Americans are driving less and when they do drive, they're driving cars that use less fuel per mile.

You can likely credit the fuel economy increase on the federal mandates for higher MPG ratings on new cars, and the cut-back in driving on the high unemployment and stagnant/falling real wages of the employed.

Whatever the cause for the drop in September/October 2011 was, that was only a drop in refinery sales, as gas sales at the pump experienced no such fall [3].

1: http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2012/0223/Americans-trend-...

2: http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2008/12/16-transpo...

3: http://ycharts.com/indicators/us_gasoline_station_sales

Alternatively, you can credit both the fuel economy increase and the cut-back in driving on higher gas prices, which can in turn be credited to rising global demand for gasoline.

Prices can rise in response to both rising demand and falling supply.

Given that we're within the window of peak oil forecasts, and demand (particularly in India and China) has been rising, it's very likely both.

That would explain the steady decline, but doesn't explain what I think is the real question, the drastic drop starting in October 2011.

The data seems a bit fishy to me. I have a hard time believing that gasoline consumption did not change for 22 years (1986 to 2008).

Thats not what the data represents. It represents sales by refiners to retail. That is buying gas from a Shell gas station (also a refiner) counts, buying gas from a mom + pop corner store who wholesale buys their gas from a refiner (or distributor) doesn't count. The graph seems to just say that some refiner sold off their retail gas stations (or something like that).

the dip in refinery sales might be related to the shutdown of a few refineries which appears to have occurred during fall 2011.

here is a google search i used: https://www.google.com/search?q=gas+refinery+shuts+down&...

edit: speeling.

Year______Cars____Trucks_________ Total

2011_ 6,089,422___ 6,951,210___ 13,040,632

2010_ 5,635,433___ 6,136,787__ 11,772,220

2009_ 5,400,890___ 5,200,478___ 10,601,368

Here are some data. Lots of trucks.

Fleet Fuel economy != improving ?

edit:

Newer trucks are not much better on Gas, still ~20Mpg/ish

Maybe old trucks were horrible? Dunno

If not replacements, blending in more trucks is not helping MPGs

You can likely credit the fuel economy increase on the federal mandates for higher MPG ratings on new cars...

I'm not sure how likely that is. Seems to me that when gas is cheap, people buy big, powerful cars (e.g. SUVs) with little regard to fuel economy. When gas prices rise, people buy small economical cars. People buy what they think they can afford and makes sense for them, and automakers make more of what the customers are buying and less of what they are not buying.

These numbers represent under 10% of total U.S. gasoline use so this is no way due to 'fuel economy' or 'driving less', it is just reflecting the fact that less and less gas stations are owned by refineries.

Its that 2011 September October decrease thats particularly interesting. I'm trying to think of what happened that would have caused a 25%ish drop in sales.

I think there was a round of refinery closings around that time.

Production doesn't show a massive dip, but does show a general decline. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&...

price spikes do seem to align though.. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&...

Pretty simple: the U.S. economy is contracting severely, even though the manipulated (and preposterous, if you think about them for more than a moment) economic statistics (GDP, U3) are not.

I'm not saying this is The Big One (I've been expecting it for a decade now) but I do expect The Big One to start a lot like this.

Do you have any evidence of this contraction? I'd be curious to hear which statistics you think are better indicators.

Sure.

You are looking at one, in gasoline sales.

U6 over 15% looks pretty miserable:

  http://helpthe99ers.blogspot.com/2012/02/graph-of-day-u3-u4-and-u6.html

and the less-easily-manipulated population employment ratio is bouncing along the bottom (maybe contracting):

  http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000

General sales taxes in CA are down (although the latest data is not up yet):

  http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/state-taxes/california/general-sales-and-gross-receipts/tax-revenue-per-capita/2011/q3#graph

Generally, the harder the statistic, the worse the situation looks. Which, given that we are in an election year and should expect the govt. to be juicing the economy as much as it can, should be worrying.

None of those three look good, but, as far as I can tell, none indicate a contraction... at worst they indicate that things are remaining bad, but not getting worse. The first appears to be improving, slowly. The second appears to be hovering aroung the same level since 2010. The third link is broken for me, but when I find the data I think you're referencing on that site it appears that there is a dip in the latest quarter, but if you look at the history that data clearly does not track the overall performance of the economy very closely. I can't say I find your claim very credible so far, but if you have additional evidence I'd be very interested.

They all indicate a very weak to declining economy and, of course, they are all trailing indicators. With the ISM miss this month and the latest jobs debacle, I expect us to be officially in recession by the end of the year (with all the experts shocked, of course.)

OTOH, it's an election year, and Bernanke will print, so who can say?

> Bernanke will print

Anyone holding paper is going to suffer some bad hurt in the coming year.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/manufacturing-ism-misses-third...

Do you have any real statistics to back up your statement? I can counter with other anecdotal stuff - where I live, housing prices are rising and unemployment dropping. So I guess I'll state that the economy is growing strongly. That doesn't make it any more true than your unsubstantiated statement.

See below. And see the latest ISM.

Of course there are pockets of growth during any economic contraction. In this case we can expect them to be in areas with first access to the money printed by the federal reserve: government, banking, etc. And there is an energy boom on as well. So it depends.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/will-baltic-dry-bounce-satans-...

whats also interesting is that the price of gas hasn't moved much either: http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx?time=24

i guess this is a case where lower demand has kept prices high.

Pump prices are very sticky and depend on the cost of production per country.

With recently depressed crude prices, some countries are actually pulling back production.

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/im...

The notable exception being Saudi, which (with America's complete approval, I suppose) ramps up production to drive down the cost of petroleum to make sure that Iran does not derive as much profit from its sales as it could, even at detriment to itself, as a calculated move in the cold war between those two countries.

There's not much context, but I'm struck by the fact that this appears to have been a (very modest) leading indicator before the Great Recession.

I'm not sure it was a useful one. There is a similar dip in the early 90s that doesn't seem to correspond to much.

Perhaps sensitive but nonspecific?

look at historical prices, my guess is they were spiking

[yes, from $1.XX in '05 to $4.XX in '08]

edit: citation

http://66.70.86.64/ChartServer/ch.gaschart?Country=Canada...

"U.S. Total Gasoline Retail Sales by Refiners"

does this include imported gasoline from foreign refiners, I doubt it, we import more gasoline these days.

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