Mergers and Other Factors That Influence Gasoline Prices

The price of crude oil is a major determinant of gasoline prices. However, a number of other factors also affect gasoline prices including (1) increasing demand for gasoline; (2) refinery capacity in the United States that has not expanded at the same pace as the demand for gasoline; (3) a declining trend in gasoline inventories and (4) regulatory factors, such as national air quality standards, that have induced some states to switch to special gasoline blends.

Petroleum industry consolidation plays a role in determining gasoline prices too. The 1990s saw a wave of merger activity in which over 2600 mergers occurred in all segments of the U.S. petroleum industry. This wave of mergers contributed to increased market concentration in U.S. refining and marketing segments. Econometric modeling GAO performed on eight of these mergers showed that, after controlling for other factors including crude oil prices, the majority resulted in higher wholesale gasoline prices generally between 1 and 7 cents per gallon. While these price increases seem small, they are not trivial