Discrepancies between crude oil prices and the prices charged to consumers of gasoline occur for several reasons. For starters, oil prices are never solely a product of supply-and-demand equations. The role of speculators in the financial services industry with respect to oil prices is estimated to account for as much as 60 to 80 percent of the price of a barrel of oil. What that means is that the financial machinations of those who bet on oil prices without having any other role in the petroleum sector is a more important force in setting those prices than calculations of actual demand. While oil and gasoline prices largely track each other, there are perturbations in the relationship between the two commodities because of these financial wagers.
Differences between oil and gas prices also exist because of such variables as federal and state taxation rates that sometimes drive up the cost of gasoline to consumers irrespective of the price of a barrel of crude. When oil prices plunge for whatever reason (say, discovery of a major new oil field, a decision by a major oil producer/exporter like Saudi Arabia to increase production to finance domestic projects, or more recently, the introduction into the global market of American and Canadian shale), local and federal governments usually consider raising tax rates on gasoline both to generate revenue and to attempt to drive down consumer demand, which tends to increase during the summer vacation driving months.
In short, while oil prices are largely a product of supply and demand, and while gasoline prices, in general, track oil prices, variances occur for the reasons stated above.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Ignoring-Fundamentals-Speculation-Has-Been-Driving-Oil-Prices.html
https://www.macrotrends.net/2501/crude-oil-vs-gasoline-prices-chart
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2018/02/11/gas-prices-rise-despite-surging-u-s-oil-output/320352002/
As the question says, "we want to think that demand and supply controls prices when the cost of crude oil is set by the same economic conditions that determine the price of gas." This would make intuitive sense because gasoline is derived from crude oil. Additionally, this is normally the case. The first graph shows "spot prices" for gasoline at New York Harbor from 1986 to 2016, and the second shows the same thing for crude oil at Cushing, Oklahoma during the same period. Looking at the two graphs, we can see that they more or less track each other during some periods. For example, looking at 2008, we see that price of crude oil was 100 dollars a barrel. This coincided with the record price of gasoline in that same year, which reached a historic high. In fact, this is typical of a long-term trend in which the price of both crude oil and gasoline slowly rose over more than twenty years. Overall, this trend continued after the market turbulence of 2008, with crude and gas prices rising and then falling fairly significantly in the 2010s.
But the relationship between the two is never precise, and this is reflected in the graph to a limited extent. One economist has said that, although prices generally remain near each other, the prices of gasoline and crude oil "move in an elliptical orbit" around each other. In other words, although there is a relationship between the two, sometimes gasoline prices may not exactly respond to trends in crude oil prices in the short term. There are refining costs and other issues that might not affect crude oil prices, but they can cause the price of gasoline to rise as the supply falls. Gasoline cannot be stored in the long term, and it is very (demand) inelastic, meaning that the demand for it usually stays high no matter the price. Sometimes (including the last year or so in most of the United States) crude oil price drops do not equate to lower prices at the pump, even if the two do usually track each other over the long term.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/energy/price-oil-plummeting-same-can-t-be-said-gas-prices-n731331
well written article
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