Price of Octane Collapses as Gas Prices Soar?

 Ok, I am a liberal arts and humanities kind of guy. Mathematics of an  order higher than arithmetic can trigger feelings of anxiety and inadequacy.

However even my limited faculties have detected a 50% collapse in the cost of octane as a component of gasoline. That beloved constituent of gasoline that makes it burn more efficiently, or hotter, or cleaner or at least more expensively just doesn't keep pace with the price of oil or gas!

My neighbourhood ARCO here in suburban Los Angeles was selling gasoline a year ago at say $2.00, $2.10 and 2.20 per gallon depending on the octane level.

This week that station is selling gas at $4.49, $4.59 and $4.69 per gallon, the 3 prices based on the same rationale.

Notice something funny?

Octane prices haven't gone up. Relative to the other constituent parts of gasoline, octane's  price has fallen dramatically.

Feel free to intervene and improve the numbers and percentages or better still unpin the logic of this diary.  You see, the pattern I see in octane prices is making me lose faith in the honesty of gas prices.

If memory serves me well, the lowest grade gas is rated 86-87 parts per bucket of octane. The medium and high grade offering running at something like 88-89 and 89-90.

Apparently 10 cents on a 2.00 gallon would buy you an octane point if you bought middle grade at 2.10.  Thats 21 dimes. One for octane.

 Now I can buy that octane point for one dime while the other parts of gas take 46 dimes for a gallon.

 I used to think that octane was a substance made from crude oil. So when the price of a barrel of  oil triples my old logic says octane is going to be more expensive.

 Apparently octane is made from some other commodity with a more stable international price. Those octane points are holding steady at 10 cents per.

 I am trying to remember the price spread back in the innocent days of say... $1.00 a gallon.  Wasn't an octane point worth a dime then too? Or was the spread between the three grades lower?

If I was nasty man I would start having thoughts that gasoline prices are ..fishy. That octane pricing is fishy.  Maybe long time fishy.

Well, here are a pair of Wiki links. Octane, and the octane rating system.

They are written in science and not so helpful to me.

Apparently octane is a  straight chain alkane but they don't seem to know where it comes from either.

Wherever octane comes from, or whoever is making it... god bless 'em.

They are keeping their prices stable while the guys who make the other things in gasoline are charging whole great big lots more for the stuff.

Explain it to me in "arts and humanitiese".

http://en.wikipedia.org/...

http://en.wikipedia.org/...

I wish gasoline was 100% octane.