Andrew,

With all due respect, factcheck.org doesn't inspire confidence in general (are they bequeathed credibility simply by force of their shrewd marketing coup/URL grab? with which they can advance whatever frame-of-reference-laden analysis they wish to advance?), not least because in this case it cites growth in international demand for the particular refining product. Does this really require explanation? How much liquid shipping capacity is devoted to refined petroleum I wonder? And how much of that would be devoted to such low value added product as diesel? This is a patently unserious argument devised for public consumption (of a piece with factcheck's stated and unstated aims).

Furthermore, you note albeit by way of hand waving away that diesel has lower cost per barrel crude than gasoline, yet is increasing as fast in price as gasoline even as its cost basis isn't. Yes, there is an elasticity of demand issue, but there is also an elasticity of supply issue. If there truly were no collusion, no self-serving bottlenecks in this remarkably vertically integrated and highly ologopolistic industry, than the greater elasticity of supply to price (given that the cost basis has not been increasing as rapidly) could conceivably counter that- neigh, overwhelm that. But we are given no analysis on that basis. Hmmm... I wonder what conclusion that kind of narrow analysis might support?

One other thing that bears pointing out: could it be entire coincidence that the cost of the good with a far lower public profile has gone up a lot less than the one that comes with public scrutiny/audits/investigations???? No doubt.

Whether with intent or not, whoever penned this industry friendly piece, did so because they approached the issue believing ex-ante that the complaints about market manipulation for refined product come from uninformed people looking for a scapegoat for the laws of supply and demand. To quote a statement from a different context, "Hogwash. Hogwash! HOGWASH!!"

In case it was not clear, I have a problem with any analysis of the price of refined product that doesn't take any of this into account:

http://letters.salon.com/tech/feature/2008/05/29/price_of_gasoline/permalink/e7c6c60c39aa93503504cc7a5bd49245.html

And with good reason. There has been no cooperation on the part of oil majors, etc. to provide the type of transparency that would be exculpatory. This is not to say that they're guilty until proven innocent, this is to say that they would benefit greatly from such transparency if they were indeed innocent of gouging Americans out of billions in hard earned.

Of course, that will never be forthcoming so long as they can rely on the media to carry their water, not to mention lay on the PR and lobbying thick (and $100s of billions of profit per annum provides plenty of scope for viscosity- did you know that all of us Americans own the oil companies?) to achieve their ends.