Gasoline deliveries tanking...so to speak...

[suspectnumber961]

charles hugh smith-Why Is Gasoline Consumption Tanking?





Retail gasoline deliveries, already well below 1980 levels, have absolutely fallen off a cliff. Is the plunge inventory-related, i.e. are storage facilities so full that retailers are simply putting off deliveries?

Though I don't have data on hand to support this, I know from one of my correspondents who is in the gasoline distribution/delivery business that gasoline is very much a "just in time" commodity: gas stations are often close to running out of fuel when they get a delivery. Stations aren't holding huge quantities of surplus gasoline; that's not how the business works.

Given the absence of "extra storage" in gas stations (and the fact that the number of gas stations has fallen dramatically since 1980), it is reasonable to conclude that retail delivery is largely a function of demand, i.e. gasoline consumption.

Even if you dismiss the recent plunge as an outlier, the declines in retail gasoline deliveries are mind-boggling. If you look at the data from 1983 to 2011 on the link above, you will note that delivery declines align with recessions.

...

What other plausible explanation is there for the decline from 42.4 MGD in July 2011 to 30.9 MGD in November 2011 other than a dramatic decline in discretionary driving? That 27% drop in a few months in unprecedented, except in times of war or sharp economic contraction, i.e. recession.

[Frank Lee]

So I'm just incredulous, looking at the graph of declining use, thinking "This cannot be. There are ever more ***holes clogging up my street and town and local highways and state and nation and world than ever before".

THIS U.S. Energy Information Administration graph looks different:



4-Week Avg U.S. Product Supplied of Finished Motor Gasoline (Thousand Barrels per Day)

Are they measuring the same thing? Does one have imports/exports and one not?

It has dropped since '08, but only to '00 levels. Step back and the curve undeniably has relentlessly gone up. We are in a dip... will it continue?

[nemo]

The only plausible answer is Ecomodder.com.

[suspectnumber961]

The difference might be what is being exported?

That was (is) the focus of the XLPipeline....to get the tar sands oil to the refiners on the gulf coast to export refined products?

Remember....it is always about control and exploitation for profit?


They claim it's about jobs and oil...but it's really about profits for the 1%?

All you've got to do is keep them dumb and confused....and if that fails there is always the security state?

[brucepick]

I'm sure there's a fair bit of this going on:

Three people at work, coming back from lunch, noticed my car with the "48 MPG" sticker on the window and the aero rear deck spoiler that was on at the time. So I answered their questions and told them what I was up to, and yes, I really was getting 48 mpg at the time (now 50+).

I learned that one of them was commuting over an hour in some big SUV.
Next thing I knew, she'd traded it for a Civic and is now happily getting 38 mpg. She was very pleased that she drove to Georgia (and back?) from CT for $120 gas cost.

[jamesqf]

People trading their gas-sucking oversized pickups for noisy diesel-sucking "lookit me, I'm a big bad trucker!" pickups?

[GRU]

Hmm the US population has gone up more than 35 % (about 85 mil people more) since 1980 so i don't see the fuel consumption going down, that first graph doesn't show that we use less fuel now than 30 years ago

[TedV]

Are they measuring just the deliveries to each individual retail gas station location? If so, there are tons of gas stations popping up all over. More places to pump gas with slightly more ***holes clogging the road means lest sales to go around even tho the same or more overall sales go up or stay the same= less individual deliveries of gas. "spread the wealth and everyone gets short changed"

[tjts1]

This helps explain the huge gap between the price of diesel and gasoline.

[Arragonis]

This seems to be the output from refineries - I thought a lot of refineries had closed and refined fuel is now imported, also a lot of refined gas (petrol) has been replaced with other fuels such as gas, LPG and so on.

A refinery closed here recently too - the profits are not so high any more.