Gas Prices Suck

I've noticed in the last year or so that gas pricing, at least locally, has changed.

Any company that sells a commodity product, be it gasoline or frozen peas, prices it's products in one of two ways. It either bases it's price on a certain percentage over the cost of purchasing that product, or it takes into account potential pricing changes and charges a price that averages out those fluctuations.

Gasoline prices used to be based on the first method. They fill their storage tank with gas purchased at a certain dollar amount, and then charge based on a percentage profit. But now they have figured out a completely new way to price things. They price the gas based on market price no matter what the gas cost them previously.

I pass my local gas station on the way home at 5:15 pm and when I go back out at 6:00 pm the price has increased by $.05 a gallon! Now I guarantee that the gas in their tank is the same gas that was in there at 5:15! What has changed? Greed.

The original cost of the gas in that tank in the ground did not change. Yet they immediately increase their profit margin on that same gas. Do think that's fair?