For this post, I was curious about the prices of oil during 2015 through 2017 relative to the prices of gas and diesel in Barbados during the same period. The United States Energy Information Administration website has a ton of pricing data, so I pulled WTI and Brent crude oil prices from their website:
With these prices in hand, I took the average prices for WTI and Brent – for each year – and incorporated them into the fuel price chart I posted the other day:
Since the majority of Barbadians (myself included) are unaware of how exactly fuel prices are calculated, it’s not fair to make a straight comparison between the price of oil that we see in the news, and the price we pay at the pump. Still, one can’t help but think that if oil prices are down, then we should be paying less at the pump (and vice-versa). It’s a logical argument.
Of-course, crude oil prices are for crude oil, i.e., unrefined products. We can’t exactly put crude oil into our fuel tanks (well we could, but the end result would not be effective). Also, we don’t know how (futures contracts?) and when fuel for the country is purchased (every month?). Being interested in prices in general, and fuel specifically, this is something that I will be looking into as time goes by.