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from five to eight days and in the interim the oil prices can act crazy. guest: they can. we saw extreme volatility today with market jumping around a dollar in a few minutes on different headlines. the one thing you have to remember, neil, if the storm doesn t do as much damage, usually the products like gasoline and heating oil will go down more than they who is gone up than before the storm. i am very concerned about this storm because of its track. a category two storm in alabama or into new orleans could create the type offed if waters that could shut the refineries down. you do not have to go too far around to see what impact refinery outages can have on communities whether you talk about the chevron fire, off the coast of california, or the problems in indiana, they could cause severe price hikes and we had a major refinery explosion
some people are crying foul wondering if it s an excuse to raise prices. if you say this chevron fire really was disastrous enough to justify the price hike? it was. if you look at the wholesale prices they ve been restraining the price increases in california. the wholesale market went up over 30-cents overnight. you ve only seen a 6-cent increase, in los angeles barely a penny. they are trying to hold back the price increase. if it were just california i d say the whole country shouldn t go up. it s not just california. look at what is happening across the country. last week we had a pipeline leaking, it cut off oil to two major refineries in the midwest. the same two refineries had a fire of their own that had shut down production. plus you ve had a very active tropical storm season down in the gulf of mexico, that slows imports. you have problems in the northeast. you name it, it goes wrong and when it goes wrong we pay for it at the pumps.