My View From the cheap seats

Every time trouble flares in the Middle East, I learn two things.

First, the Strait of Hormuz is apparently the most important stretch of water on Earth that few people in Gainesville have ever actually seen.

Second, gasoline is about to cost more than a steak dinner.

That narrow passage is where a huge chunk of the world’s oil passes on tankers leaving places like Iran and Saudi Arabia. When the shooting starts over there, traders panic over here, and the price of gas jumps faster than a cat on a hot stovetop.

Naturally, standing at the pump watching the numbers spin upward like a Vegas slot machine, a person begins to ask reasonable questions.

For instance, if a company like Chevron drills the oil, refines the oil, and has its name on the gas station, why can’t it just keep the whole thing in the family and sell us its own gasoline?

Turns out the gasoline business doesn’t work like that. It works more like a church potluck supper. Everybody brings something, it all winds up on the same table, and by the end nobody’s entirely sure who made the potato salad.

Let’s say Chevron pumps oil in Texas. That oil might go to a Chevron refinery — or it might go to somebody else’s refinery. Meanwhile, that refinery might be processing crude from three other companies and possibly a tanker that just arrived from halfway around the world.

Once gasoline leaves the refinery, it usually travels through giant pipelines such as the Colonial Pipeline, which carries fuel from the Gulf Coast up through the Southeast. Inside those pipelines are batches of gasoline from all sorts of companies.

Picture a line of railcars: Exxon gasoline, then Shell gasoline, then Chevron gasoline. They try to stay separated. They really do.

But after hundreds of miles in a pipeline, they mix together about the way chocolate and vanilla ice cream mix when a five-year-old decides he wants both.

By the time gasoline reaches a distribution terminal, it’s basically … gasoline. Now comes the fun part.

A tanker truck pulls up to deliver fuel to a Chevron station. The driver fills from a big storage tank shared by several companies. Then — right before leaving — a machine squirts a tiny shot of Chevron’s proprietary Techron into the tanker truck. Congratulations. It’s now Chevron gasoline.

The next truck fills from the exact same tank and gets a shot of Shell additives instead. Two trucks. Same gasoline. Different last names. Which means the Exxon station down the street might be selling fuel refined by Chevron, while the independent station across the road could be selling gasoline refined by Exxon.

Meanwhile, the guy at pump number three is insisting he only buys one brand because he can “tell the difference.” Bless his heart.

Of course, none of this helps with the real problem, which is that gasoline prices in Georgia can shoot up because somebody halfway around the world is rattling sabers near the Strait of Hormuz. Oil is priced on a global market. If traders think less oil might get through that narrow passage, the price goes up everywhere.

Including right here, where you’re standing at the pump wondering if it might be cheaper to just stay home.

The strange truth is that the gasoline in your tank might have come from Texas, Louisiana, North Dakota, or another continent entirely. It might have been refined by one company, shipped by another, and sold by a third.

But one thing you can count on: no matter whose gasoline it is, you paid for the expensive kind.