It's often difficult to analyse situations when you're in the middle of them because of all the incoming data that can be distractive........thus the old saying: You can't see the forrest for the trees.

We have been setting ourselves up for higher prices on gasoline for over 40 years. If for no other reason (though there are many) than transportation costs as a result of environmental regulations (some of which are good, others not so much). We haven't built a new gasoline refinery in this country since 1976. There's been one proposed/promised in Arizona for at least a decade but it appears to be the project on the perpetual horizon. All of our improvement in productivity has been at existing refineries, some of which are getting quite old. To wit, two old refineries have closed in the last couple years because they just couldn't be upgraded cost effectively. We had that Keystone XL discussion on another thread where it was noted, part of the reason for it to go down to Texas was that's where the refineries with the equipment/technology to process that type of crude are. Pipelines are very cost competive means of transportation compared to all the other available methods. We're getting to the point where nearly all our refineries are at/near sea ports........for a reason. However, that means that inland markets need to be on a pipeline route from the refineries that produce enough product, or on a pipeline from a sea port dock that can handle finished product. And here is where regulations start to creep in. You won't see the costs broken out on a receipt or a corner sign because it's too dificult to jump through those hoops, but the added cost will be there. Just one for instance. There's something called the Jones act that requires vessels from one U.S. port going to another use only U.S. registered vessels, with high majority U.S. crews. These cost a lot more to operate (surprise), and that extra cost gets buried in the price of whatever is transported. Outcome? You'll start seeing finished fuel product being imported while finished product from, let's say a Texas refinery, will be exported. Of course some politicians, and their media lap dogs, will throw stones as the evil oil companies over this, and most of the uninformed sheeple in our country will believe it because it APPEARS true (just like the "record profits" distraction) all the while not exposing the government caused, underlying sources of the problem.

Next you end up with some sort of a "crisis", and as we've been told by the current operatives in DC............"...never let a crisis go to waste... you can do things you could not do before...". I'm sure we can count on our political class to save us............................right?