In crude oil trading, we have seen a 46 percent increase over 1 year in the margins there.
Shell and Exxon support export, but refiners like Valero could end up paying more for the crude oil.
A variety of factors contribute to the price of gasoline in the United States. These factors include worldwide supply, demand and competition for crude oil, taxes, regional differences in access to gasoline supplies and environmental regulations.
About 75% of the price of gas is really dictated by crude oil. At the heart of the issue is increasing demand over a period of many years around the world. World crude oil consumption now is close to 90 million barrels a day. Most of the growth in demand is coming from China and the developing world.
Predicting oil prices is anyone's guess.
Energy companies, such as Chevron and Shell, and oil producing countries, such as Kuwait and Venezuela, pump crude oil from their vast land holdings and sell it on the world market.
I think oil prices are down for two reasons. One is, there is a lot of supply. There is a lot of supply because the U.S. now produces a lot of oil and there is a lot of supply because the Saudis seem to want to produce a lot of oil, maybe to punish the Iranians and the Russians.
Petrol price is a deregulated commodity, price of which is decided by our oil marketing companies based on input cost and other parameters.
