Why spend your evenings and weekends welding and programming?

I have been following the pre buy prices of oil for a while now.  For those of you unfamiliar with the term “pre buy”. It is what is sounds like, the price of the oil you will have delivered is prepaid by you and you and your supplier determine how many gallons you should buy.  If you over buy you can usually take the remaining gallons you bought in a final delivery and store that amount in your own tank for next year.  If you can’t hold that much you get a refund, but my supplier would not hold that price for anything longer than one season.  If I under bought they usually would allow me the pre buy price on additional gallons if I used their estimate of how many gallons to buy.

Below is a .pdf chart of the pre buy prices  by year.  Note the chart also has a straight line regression trendline based on the existing data.  The line is extrapolated out and predicts what the coming years prices may become.  Note also that for a period of years the trendline and the prices were relatively accurate and tight to the trendline.   I think as time goes on the market may become more volatile.  The world market for oil is currently in the dollar currency.  This may also add to the price fluctuations as the dollar currency may become volatile as well as the oil market’s geopolitical issues may also add to the fluctuation.  Makes me want to get off the merry go round.  Note clicking on the link should bring up the chart as a pdf file.  Bear with me as a I try different ways to express things in wordpress.  Suggestions are welcome.

OilPrices2012