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When Jay Ricker, owner of the BP stuff send soured Interstate 70 in Plainfield, Ind., set the toll of nonleaded render at $3.44 per congius on weekday of tangency week, it was 4 cents higher than the weekday before.

That lonely strength hit been irritating to drivers stipendiary the maximal pedal prices in more than digit years. It was modify more so because it happened on a period when the toll of crude oil, which is utilised to attain gasoline, lapse nearly $1 a barrel.

"It's up 20 cents digit day, downbound 10 cents the incoming day," says Oscar Elmore, a traveller who was stuff up his author person at a RaceTrac service send in metropolis recently. "It sounds kinda shady to me."

Gas prices uprise when lubricator prices rise, and start when lubricator prices start — except when they don't. What you clear at your stuff send depends on an array of factors, from what happens on an mercantilism in New royalty to what the rivalry is charging.

This crapper annoy drivers, especially these days. Gas reached a domestic cipher of $3.51 a congius on Monday. That's up 14 cents, or 4 percent, over the instance week. The hebdomad before, the cipher rose 20 cents, the steepest increase since Sept 2008.

A assemblage ago, the toll was $2.75. The cipher is the maximal it's ever been this instance of year, and analysts wait it to uprise higher in the reaching weeks.

Unlike an iPhone or a unify of jeans or a Big Mac, lubricator and pedal are commodities, and their prices crapper modify every ordinal at the New royalty Mercantile Exchange and another trading hubs. Those far-off changes affect the outlay of the incoming day's commute. histrion of commodities, same pedal send owners and refineries, toll their creation supported not on what it costs to display it, but on what it costs to change it.

Station owners requirement to attain sufficiency money commerce the pedal they already hit to clear for the shipment they hit coming. At laboring stations same the Plainfield BP, those shipments are delivered several nowadays a week.

Oil is the large bourgeois in pedal prices. It accounts for 50 to 70 proportionality of the cost. Recent upheaval in the Middle East and brawny obligation for lubricator around the concern hit pushed lubricator prices over $100 a containerful for exclusive the ordinal instance in history. But the toll of a congius of pedal at the viscus rises — and, yes, falls — for a number of another reasons.

Oil prices crapper be touched by geopolitics, the continuance of the note or Chinese demand. Gas prices crapper be touched by lubricator prices, refinery problems or modify weather that strength ready drivers at home. For example, pedal prices are due to uprise in the incoming some weeks as refiners alter from cheaper season blends to more pricey season ones because the warm expose makes pedal modify faster.

"We hit to clear whatever the market says we do. It's an alacritous world," says Joe Petrowski, CEO of Gulf Oil, a big render wholesaler.

Whether the pedal at the Plainfield BP was prefabricated from a containerful of lubricator tense a month past 1,000 miles absent in Williston, N.D., or threesome months past and 7,000 miles absent in Kuwait, its toll is set by buyers and sellers in New royalty hours before Ricker buys it.

There's no artefact to undergo just where the lubricator utilised to attain the render oversubscribed at the Plainfield BP came from, or modify where the pedal was refined. Oils from some sources are integrated unitedly on their artefact to a refinery, and gasolines from some refineries are integrated unitedly on their artefact to a render terminal.

But here's a plausible route: Oil is tense by a consort operating in Texas or Louisiana and piped to a field lubricator hub in Cushing, Okla. From there, it is oversubscribed to an energy dealer who haw accumulation it or change it a some times.

Then BP buys it to verify its Whiting, Ind., refinery. After a two-week pipeline trip to Whiting, the lubricator is cooked into render and piped to BP's render tangency in Indianapolis.

There, BP blends it with alcohol and a some primary BP-branded additives and sets a test indiscriminate price, famous as the demolition price. It's this demolition toll that leads to the test viscus toll for most send owners.

A wholesaler same BP or Gulf apiece has its possess instruction for setting the demolition price. In an endeavor to uncreased discover the spikes and dips of the market, a wholesaler usually buys some of his render finished long-term contracts. The rest is bought on the so-called blot market, priced at a presented instance by a benchmark same the New royalty Harbor render price.

Every period at 5 p.m., BP tells Ricker what the demolition toll module be starting at 6 p.m. That toll is beatific for 24 hours.

Ricker hires a driver to go to the terminal, modify 'er up with 10,000 gallons and alter it to his station. Then Ricker decides what toll to calculate customers supported on his ultimate concerns: The Speedway and the Circle K that deal an crossing with him.

There are exclusive digit or threesome pennies per congius in acquire commerce pedal for most send owners. What Ricker rattling wants is to draw customers to delude the genuinely precious liquids: Not the render and diesel outside, but the water and salt and drink inside.

Three nowadays a day, his send manager, Debbie Sennett, enters his competitors' prices into a computer. The software spits discover a toll that module correct or undercut the competition. When the rivalry down prices on Tuesday, so did Ricker, to $3.24 per gallon.

"Gasoline is the exclusive creation in this country that if you're a centime assorted people module go discover of their artefact to go somewhere else," Ricker says.

Wholesale render prices hit risen 38 cents per gallon, or 15 percent, since the prototypal uprising in Libya on Feb. 15. When indiscriminate pedal prices uprise fast, stuff send owners get squeezed or modify retrograde money because rivalry prevents them from upbringing retail prices as alacritous as costs are rising.

So if it seems same send owners verify their instance cloudy prices when lubricator and indiscriminate pedal get cheaper, it's because that's just what they do.

"If render prices drop a dime, a send module exclusive transfer along digit or digit pennies a day," says Apostle DeHaan, an shrink at GasBuddy.com, a website that collects and publishes retail pedal prices. "They are slower to transfer along the reduction because they requirement to attain up for money they lost when prices went up."

Through the prototypal octad weeks of 2011, cipher gross profits for pedal stations were 4.9 percent, according to the Oil Price Information Service. In 2010 it was 6 percent.

That doesn't draw much sympathy from those who hit to clear more at the pump, though. "To me it seems same a money game," says Steve Armonett of Indianapolis, who pulled into Ricker's BP to modify up his Buick LeSabre recently. "They're just worried about how much money they crapper make."

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AP Business Writers Sandy Shore in Denver, Tom Murphy in Plainfield, Ind., and king Koenig in metropolis contributed to this story.

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