Yesterday, Thursday, March 3, 2022, I had a very unusual experience at the gas pumps at the Shell Station on Rio Road. I was in my Sprinter and needed to get diesel. I inserted my credit card, noted the price was 5.399, as I expected from the sign out front and proceeded to pump the diesel. A Ram pick up pulled up on the other side. While pumping, I looked up at the sign of the prices, and it was in the process of clearing. WHILE I was pumping gas at 5.399/gallon, the prices started disappearing, and before I was finished pumping, the price for diesel had gone up 50¢/gallon! I got it for 5.399, but the guy in the Ram paid 5.899/gallon for the same gas only a few minutes later than me.

Boy, was I glad I made it there by 9 am! Won’t be driving the Sprinter anytime soon, so who knows what I will pay next time?

Note, because of a political comment I got, I looked up his claim that we were energy independent during the last administration, and found this:

“ President Biden has passed policies that could negatively impact domestic oil supplies in the future. However, thus far the price surge is primarily a result of 3 million barrels per day (BPD) of oil production that was lost in the spring of 2020 that hasn’t fully recovered. Demand has fully recovered, so that is the fundamental reason for the surge in prices. Further, that surge began in the fall of 2020 — five months before President Trump left office.” Robert Rapier, Senior Contributor on Energy for Forbes Magazine https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2021/11/14/is-the-us-energy-independent/