Sunday, June 29, 2008
Why doesn’t the cost for an oil change go up with the price of crude oil?
Gasoline is currently hovering at around $4 a gallon. I heard a talking-head expert on CNN say that it may climb to $6 a gallon before the end of summer. Normally I’d say he was just making it up, but he was wearing a tie and a tweed blazer. He obviously looked like he knew what he was talking about.
Why does gas cost so much? The experts say that it’s because of the price of oil. The price of a barrel of crude keeps rising to astronomical levels. Oil futures climbed all they way up to $143 a barrel this past Friday.
One of the things I don’t understand about this whole process is why gasoline fluctuates, but motor oil doesn’t. Gasoline isn’t the only thing derived from crude oil. Motor oil comes from crude too. It costs around $25 bucks to have my car’s oil changed at one of the national chains. That’s what I was paying ten years ago. Why has the price of an oil change not risen at the same exponential rate that gasoline has?
With gas at $4 a gallon, why doesn’t it cost $80 for an oil change? All things being equal, you would think that it would.
