Are Gasoline and Crude Oil Price Patterns Actually Diverging?
Recently, we at EIA have received many inquiries about why gasoline retail prices have been rising compared to the New York Mercantile Exchange s (NYMEX s) reported price of crude oil. The national media have also run several prominent stories on this divergence in prices. In particular, EIA s reported average retail price of regular gasoline in the United States rose from $1.61 to $1.96 between December 29th and February 16th. During the same period, NYMEX s most reported price for crude oil was volatile, but had no clear upward trend. So what s going on? Before addressing the question, it s worth just a moment to discuss what, exactly, NYMEX s most reported price really is. NYMEX is a futures exchange, where different traders can buy and sell a very particular type of oil for many months out into the future. The particular type of oil is called West Texas Intermediate or WTI for short. WTI is light, sweet crude, with low sulfur content and relatively high yields of high-value product
