The "annual" rite of spring price gouging on gasoline is mostly a result of the "summer blend" scam, where you get to pay an extra 20 cents or so a gallon to subsidize sugar beet growers for the unnecessary addition of ethanol......to reduce emissions of CO, which can be done better, with less CO2 emissions from transporting the damned ethanol, with chemical additives at about 2 cents a gallon.

Today's average crude price is still around $60 a barrel. That is the price of a barrel of oil is up about 16%, but the price of gasoline is up nearly 26%..... So, the price of oil doesn't really explain it.

Degassing and higher RR shipping fees will raise the price of delivered crude slightly, estimates between .5 and 2 dollars a barrel (worst case....). So it's not really a game-changer in the cost of crude for places like the Bakken, as long a prices stay at or above these low current oil price levels.

Maybe, like the socialist sugar beet industry, we could get a sweetheart deal for the RR industry and the oil industry, and maybe make the "gubmint" pick up the tab for the cost of derailments, explosions, evacuations, and damages to the property of others....

Otherwise, under the current scheme of things, it's a cost of doing business, and the RR's are only trying to recover the cost of doing business, with the surcharge that the Oil producers are opposing.