Prices Of Oil Products Research Articles

Opened Problems Of The Application Of IAS 39 On Reporting Of Financial Derivatives In The Czech Republic

Although in the United States derivatives have been traded since around the middle of the nineteenth century, in the Czech Republic a derivative was an unknown term until lately or rather a term referring to someplace in an ununknown empire. The situation started to change roughly in the second half of nineties, when as part of macroeconomic shocks and government crisis in 1997 when interest rates increased significantly and the Czech crown devaluated from day to day. At that time, companies felt, for the first time ever, how heavy impact an unexpected and not counted on change of market conditions may have on them. From 2001 to 2004, another unusual phenomenon occurred which shook the business sector; should a prophet predicted it at the end of the nineties, he would probably be clamed to be crazy. The exchange rate of dollar against crown dropped from over 40 CZK/USD to 20 CZK/USD. Companies that made contracts with their customers in dollars but with suppliers in crowns bore a great exchange rate risk and they frequently paid a lot when dollar dropped. At the moment we also have to mention world prices of oil and oil products which rocketed so high that nobody could have expected it several years ago. This paper focuses on the comparison of reporting of the derivatives using IFRS in comparison with the Czech accounting legislature by the companies listed on the Prague Stock Exchange (PSE). Study draws the attention to check the differences in reporting of derivatives and also compares their qualitative advantages. Results of this study are based on the analysis of annual reports of the companies listed on the PSE. Any of analyzed companies didnt allow all of the requirements of IFRS on reporting of the financial derivatives.

Oil Products Price Dynamics - Mean Reversion and Structural Breaks: Application of ARMA-GARCH-Class Models

This study investigates the joint phenomena of mean-reversion and time-varying volatility along with verification of structural break for oil product prices. We adopt the discretisation version of two-factor stochastic model proposed by Schwartz & Smith (2000) with mean-reversion, time-varying volatility and structural breaks, utilizing daily data on four oil products spot prices.

In this issue: Biotechnology Journal 8/2009

AbstractBiofuel production in the financial crisisRabinovich, Biotechnol. J. 2009, 4, 1117–1123Biotechnology by its nature goes through the cycles of booms and busts. This is particularly true for the biofuel area which depends on the prices of crude oil and biological source products, like corn, wheat, sugar and vegetable oil. The current financial crisis followed by the burst of the oil bubble has brought deep trouble to most biofuel manufacturers. It lead to cuts in venture funding and is triggering numerous bankruptcies, mergers and acquisitions. However, crude enzyme manufacturers which have developed stable fungal platforms for protein overexpression seem to be a safer alternative for investors. This article by Mikhail Rabinovich from Moscow, Russia, discusses several aspects of how white biotechnology, and especially the biofuel industry, is affected by the current financial situation.The biotechnology industry: What's next?Guertin, Biotechnol. J. 2009, 4, 1124–1131The current financial crisis is not only affecting banks and car manufacturers worldwide. It also has a profound impact on other key areas of the economy including biotechnology. A new era for biotechnology that will be more and more influenced by financial, political, demographical and ecological issues has begun. Risk and money are most probably the two most important factors which rule biotechnology industries. Especially because developing drugs is certainly among the riskiest businesses as only one product out of 5000 potential candidates reaches the market. In addition to a short overview about the current crisis and challenges of the biotech industry, Pierre Guertin from Quebec, Canada, reviews recent analysts' reports. This article sheds light on what biotechnology has become and how it is heading towards new levels for health, prosperity and sustainability.Downstream processing in IndiaBabu and Vijayalakshmi, Biotechnol. J. 2009, 4, 1132–1139India holds a small share of 2% in the global biotech market, which is dominated by the healthcare sector. Moreover, India is a key player in bio‐generic pharmaceuticals. Exactly this area has been identified as one the new pathways of sustainability that will lead to paradigm‐shifting trends in biotech industries (Ernst&Young Global biotech report). Generics based on today's blockbusters should mitigate pricing pressures on innovative drugs and lead to better margins. The bottleneck in biotechnology is not anymore the production of recombinant proteins, but the purification of proteins as one of the most challenging tasks of downstream processing. This article highlights the major players of the Indian industrial, academic and governmental sectors in this area. Especially the potential of collaborations with European countries is pointed out.

Stochastic Refinery Planning with Risk Management

This work proposes a two-stage stochastic programming model with fixed recourse via scenario analysis with incorporation of risk management for an optimal midterm refinery planning that addresses three factors of uncertainties: prices of crude oil and saleable products (in the objective function), product demands (in the RHS coefficients), and product yields (in the LHS coefficients). Compensating slack variables and “discrepancy costs” are employed to explicitly account for constraints' violations to increase model tractability. Variance is adopted as the risk measure, with its shortcomings highlighted and mean-absolute deviation proposed as an improved alternative. A representative numerical example is illustrated.

Two-stage stochastic programming with fixed recourse via scenario planning with economic and operational risk management for petroleum refinery planning under uncertainty

This work proposes a hybrid of stochastic programming (SP) approaches for an optimal midterm refinery planning that addresses three sources of uncertainties: prices of crude oil and saleable products, demands, and yields. An SP technique that utilizes compensating slack variables is employed to explicitly account for constraints’ violations to increase model tractability. Four approaches are considered to ensure solution and model robustness: (1) the Markowitz's mean-variance (MV) model to handle randomness in the objective function coefficients by minimizing the variance (economic risk) of the expected value of the random coefficients; (2): the two-stage SP with fixed recourse approach to deal with randomness in the RHS and LHS coefficients of the constraints by minimizing the expected recourse costs due to constraints’ violations; (3) incorporation of the MV model within the framework developed in (2) to formulate a mean–risk model that minimizes both the expectation and the operational risk measure of variance of the recourse costs; and (4) reformulation of the model in (3) by adopting mean-absolute deviation (MAD) as the measure of operational risk imposed by the recourse costs for a novel refinery planning application. A representative numerical example is illustrated.

Major oil exporters may profit rather than lose, in a carbon-constrained world

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) claims compensation for losses in expected oil export revenues due to CO 2 mitigation measures in developing countries. These losses are expected for two primary reasons: a reduction in the consumption of oil in importing countries and a reduction in the producer price of oil (taxation in an importing country implies a transfer of rents from producers to consumers). So far, most studies have focused on these two mechanisms and corroborated that revenue losses for OPEC are to be expected. However, there are also mechanisms that may be expected to raise the price of oil products. In a cost-effective regime for dealing with climate change, i.e., a regime in which all or most countries participate and in which the same carbon price is applied on all carbon-emitting activities, the cost of using unconventional oil, or synthetic diesel from coal, will increase even more than the cost of using conventional oil. Given that reserves of conventional oil are expected to dwindle over time, heavy oils and coal to liquids might set the long-run price for liquid fuels, which means that the price of oil would increase beyond the carbon fee; i.e., the rent on conventional oil would increase. We use an energy-economic optimization model to analyze these three mechanisms. We find that the net present value of OPEC revenue from conventional oil increases slightly (at most by 4 percent) with a global CO 2 restriction regime. We also consider conditions under which this result does not hold.

The prices of material and intermediate inputs in UK manufacturing: identifying the contributions of world prices and domestic factor costs

In this article, we explore the patterns and determinants of the prices of raw material and intermediate inputs (MIIs) to UK manufacturing as measured by the net (n) and gross (g) producer price indexes of materials and fuels (PIMF). Despite the importance of MII in total manufacturing costs their prices have been little studied. It is shown that these prices are Granger independent of the demand for such inputs and thus a simple cost based model of price determination is constructed. This model forecasts that MII prices are functions of world prices for oil, commodities and semi-manufactured products intermediated by exchange rates and duties, domestic factor prices and a trend reflecting domestic technical change, changes in mark ups and change in weights. By the means of an error correction representation it is found that PIMFn and PIMFg, in the long and short-run, are more sensitive to overseas-determined prices (of oil, commodities and semi-manufactured products) than domestically determined prices (labour, capital and the trend). It may be argued that to some considerable degree therefore the prices of material and intermediate inputs in UK manufacturing will not be particularly sensitive to policy actions.

No Czech listed companies satisfied the requirements on reporting under IFRS/IAS: Application on financial instruments

Although in the United States derivatives have been traded since around the middle of the nineteenth century, in the Czech Republic a derivative was an unknown term until lately ‐ or rather a term referring to someplace an unknown empire. The situation started to change roughly in the second half of nineties, when as part of macroeconomic shocks and government crisis in 1997 when interest rates increased significantly and the Czech crown devaluated from day to day. At that time companies felt first time ever how heavy impact an unexpected and not counted on change of market conditions may have on them. From 2001 to 2004 another unusual phenomenon occurred which shook the business sector; should a prophet has predicted it at the end of the nineties, he would probably be crazy. The exchange rate of dollar against crown dropped from over 40 CZK/USD to 20 CZK/USD. Companies that made contracts with their customers in dollars but with suppliers in crowns bore a great exchange rate risk and they frequently paid a lot when dollar dropped. At the moment we also have to mention world prices of oil and oil products which rocketed so high that nobody could have expected it several years ago. This paper focuses on the comparison of reporting of the derivatives using International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in comparison with the Czech accounting legislature by the companies listed on the Prague Stock Exchange (PSE). Study draws the attention to check the differences in reporting of derivatives and also compares their qualitative advantages. Results of this study are based on the analysis of annual reports of the companies listed on the PSE. Any of analyzed companies didn’t allow all of the requirements of IFRS on reporting of the financial derivatives.

Russia's Energy Policy: A Divergent View

A noted American analyst of Russian, Central Asian, and Transcaucasian oil and gas industries and markets offers his own perspective on issues raised in the preceding paper on Russia's energy policy (Milov et al., 2006). While generally concurring that Russia indeed pursues an ad hoc (rather than systemic) energy policy, he expresses divergent views on the role of government-regulated versus market-based pricing in final and primary energy use, reasons for the intense flows of oil and gas to Europe, the role of pipelines in determining oil export allocations, and the contribution of regional monopolies and refining capacity to domestic oil product prices. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: L71, O13, Q40, Q48. 20 references.

The Effect of Entering the WTO on the Oil Industry and the Economy of Taiwan

The crude oil price of the world increased two‐fold during 1999–2002. The price of domestic oil products for the same period increased with a smaller percentage, i.e., 27 per cent. This phenomenon could be attributed to Taiwan's oil market liberalisation after 2000 and its entering the WTO since November 2001. According to this study, the effect of entering the WTO itself suppressed the oil price from increase by 15.455 per cent in 2002. It also reduced the inflation rate by 0.74 per cent and increased the economic growth by 0.39 per cent. Nevertheless, entering the WTO also increases the competition in the oil industry, which is a big challenge to the domestic oil refinery sector and the state‐owned Chinese Petroleum Corporation in particular. The price decrease of oil products also increases the demand for oil products and exacerbated air pollution and CO2 emissions. For minimising the negative impact of entering the WTO on the economy, the Taiwan government has devised a series of preparations in the last decade. Those preparations include a step‐by‐step market liberalisation plan, a strategy taken by the state‐owned CPC, a new taxation implementation and the legislative works such as the Petroleum Act. This experience might be worthwhile for the reference of other economies.

Gas reserves and reservoir trends in The Netherlands

The Netherlands is one of the largest gas producers in Europe with about 71.2 Bcm (2.51 Tcf) of gas produced during the year 2002, half of which is exported, supplying Europe with about 20% of its total consumption. Significant gas production in The Netherlands started in 1965, reached a peak during 1976 with 101 Bcm (3 Tcf) and by year end 2002, a total of 2622 Bcm (92.6 Tcf) had been extracted. Currently the government limits yearly gas production to 80 Bcm, although the rate in the past four years has been well under this limit. Early exploration was started before the Second World War by a precursor of NAM (the 50/50 Shell-Exxon joint venture active in The Netherlands) and in 1943 the Schoonebeek oil field was found followed by Coevorden gas field in 1951. In 1959, the giant Groningen gas field was discovered by NAM, changing the face of exploration in The Netherlands. Since that time NAM has retained its dominant position as operator controlling about three quarters of annual gas production and reserves. Public domain access of data on gas and oil fields in The Netherlands is scarce, with pre-2003 legislation allowing operators to hold tight all information on onshore wells. Since most onshore concessions are large, held over long periods of time (several in perpetuity), and have no relinquishment obligations, many fields have been found and are in production without any data entering the public arena. Offshore, pre-2003 legislation required operators to release well data after 10 years. Offshore concessions are relatively large and many contain several producing fields for which no or little data is in the public domain. Following the new legislation in force since 1 January 2003 detailed production data and all on- and offshore wells and seismic data older than 5 years have to be released. However, reserve figures of fields are not in the public domain. Reserve data submitted by the operators remain confidential for a period of 10 years and in the absence of any legal requirement operators use this advantage. On a yearly basis, the government publishes general estimates on reserves, but not for individual fields. Data on the current reserve distribution for fields, reservoir trends and for licence holders are not easily ascertained. This paper attempts to fill this information gap by reviewing reserves whether these are in developed or undeveloped fields. Reserves are oil or gas volumes that can be commercially recovered at current economic conditions, industry practices and government regulations. Developed reserves are those being produced today while undeveloped fields are not yet on stream. Remaining reserves are those left in a producing field. Initial (or ultimate) reserves of a field are the cumulative production plus the remaining reserves. Because the technical data of the fields are not available, the different reserves categories are used here informally and without strict definitions. In this paper a difference has been made between the giant Groningen gas field and the other fields that are collectively called the ‘Small fields’. This term is used in a comparative sense with the Groningen field as the measuring stick, and is applied due to the Small Field Policy in The Netherlands, which allows operators priority to bring small gas fields immediately on stream in lieu of production from the Groningen field. Exploration for and production from small fields is therefore not constrained by demand for gas. Moreover because the Groningen field acts as a swing producer, small fields can produce with high load factors. The Small Field Policy sets production constraints on the Groningen field. In addition the gas price is kept relatively high because it is linked to a basket of oil product prices. Without these production constraints and the linkage of the gas price to that for oil, the low production costs and high production capacity of the Groningen field would result in low gas prices for Western Europe and most small fields in The Netherlands and surrounding countries would have been uneconomic during much of the lifetime of the Groningen field.

Are oil markets chaotic? A non-linear dynamic analysis

The analysis of products’ price behaviour continues to be an important empirical issue. This study contributes to the current literature on price dynamics of products by examining for the presence of chaos and non-linear dynamics in daily oil products for the Rotterdam and Mediterranean petroleum markets. Previous studies using only one invariant, such as the correlation dimension may not effectively determine the chaotic structure of the underlying time series. To obtain better information on the time series structure, a framework is developed, where both invariant and non-invariant quantities were also examined. In this paper various invariants for detecting a chaotic time series were analysed along with the associated Brock’s theorem and Eckman–Ruelle condition, to return series for the prices of oil products. An additional non-invariant quantity, the BDS statistic, was also examined. The correlation dimension, entropies and Lyapunov exponents show strong evidence of chaos in a number of oil products considered.

Economic Effects of Taxes on Exports of Palm Oil Products

In an effort to control increases in the prices of certain tradable commodities in recent years, the Indonesian government has experimented with a variety of policy interventions. Palm oil is important both as an export commodity and for household consumption in the form of cooking oil. We examine a palm oil export tax policy that ran from September 1994 through June 1997. We find that the taxes did reduce the domestic prices of palm oil products, and we estimate their effects on the distribution of income within Indonesia. Notably, we find that they actually reduced revenues of the government, and lowered profits for palm oil refiners. We also examine the efficiency effects and other aspects of the taxes. Finally, we discuss more drastic export restraints imposed more recently by the government during the economic crisis.

Toward a U.S. Energy Policy Twenty-First Century Issues

Abstract United States energy policy from 1973 to the present has been a sequence of initiatives based on a strategy of “oil avoidance.” This began with the 1973 oil crisis, when the oil to avoid was from the Middle Eastern suppliers, until today, when the prevailing electrification policies of coal and nuclear power development—the energy options the United States has favored—still predominate. Environmental and capital limits are identified here as the two major constraints within which future policies will likely be framed. Today's policies, however, tend to ignore the continuing need for liquid fuels and the real question of growing demand for motor gasoline. If environmental and capital limits are to provide the criteria for the development of twenty first century energy policy, then energy efficiency in automobiles and buildings, coal use, and oil product pricing are an immediate set of topics with which to begin. However, if the electrification trend is to prevail despite costs and environmental limits, then a path of “most-cost energy strategy” may well have been chosen, with global implications.

Cost and price indices

An earlier article [ 1 ] in this series dealt with prices paid by industrial users for electricity, gas and heavy fuel oil. The period covered was from 1977 to 1982 inclusive and was, in retrospect, an important time for the oil industry. World-wide consumption, according to one publication [ 21 reached a peak in 1979 at 3,125 million tonnes and fell in succeeding years to 2,809 million tonnes in 1985. Despite this drop, consumption of primary energy, i.e. all commercially traded fuels, expressed in tonnes oil equivalent, increased steadily from 6,947 million tonnes in 1979 to 7,4 14 million tonnes in 1985. Consumption of natural gas, coal, nuclear energy and hydroelectricity all increased in this period. Consumption in the non-Communist world of oil products under four main heads; gasoline, middle distillates, fuel oil and ‘othtrs’ (LPG, lubricants, bitumens, etc.) all showed reductions from 1979 to 1985, the largest being in fuel oil which fell from 1,398 million in 1979 to 863 million tonnes in 1985. Various reasons may be suggested for the fall in oil consumption in the 1980’s but probably the most important was the escalation in prices in the last two decades. In the 1970’s crude oil prices increased by a factor of about 10. In the Rotterdam market prices of heavy fuel oil rose from under US $20 per tonne in 1970 to around $70 in early 1974 and stayed around that level until late 1978. Throughout 1979 prices rose to $180 per tonne in December, then, after a slight fall, continued to rise through most of 1980, peaking at $235 per tonne in the fourth quarter. Prices fell again within a few months to around $170-180 at which level it remained fairly constant until late 1984. In early 1985 the price rose to $190 per tonne and then fell sharply to $128 by the middle of the year. After another brief recovery the fall continued through the first half of 1986 to well below $100 per tonne. The problems arising from rapidly changing dollar prices for crude oil and oil products were accentuated at times by fluctuations in the value of the U.S. dollar relative to other currencies. Most of the European currencies were gaining strength vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar in the early 1970’s, and this helped these countries to offset in part the increases in dollar prices. Around 1979 most European currencies started to weaken and the effective prices of oil products in Europe rose although dollar prices of some products actually fell. This situation persisted until mid1985 when the dollar started to weaken. As a result of the improving currency exchange rates combined with the fall in dollar prices, heavy fuel oil in Germany and Netherlands in mid1986 cost about one-third of what it had cost two years earlier. It is not surprising that OPEC, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, is now reported to be considering changing from the U.S. dollar to the Japanese yen as the currency to be used for pricing. It was OPEC which, after its formation in 1960, adopted the dollar to replace the pound sterling at a time when the latter currency was losing strength. Natural gas prices are affected by changes in oil prices since they are tied in most countries to prices of crude oil or to one or several oil products. However gas prices are much steadier than are those of crude oil and its products. One reason for this is that most suppliers of gas have a virtual monopoly and have con-

Stockpiling under price uncertainty and storage capacity constraints

A model is presented for the operation of an agent whose responsibility is to purchase and perhaps stockpile sufficient quantities of a certain commodity in order to satisfy an exogenous constant demand per time period. This is the situation faced by a state agency which is responsible for the purchasing of oil products to satisfy the demand of a country in which demand for energy has stabilized at a certain level. An important feature of the model is that the price of the commodity is described by a stochastic process. This reflects the volatility of prices of oil products. Furthermore, the model takes storage capacity constraints explicitly into account, and thus can help to assess the optimal level of storage capacity expansion. The relevant stochastic dynamic programming equations are derived and solved for the least cost function, which turns out to be piecewise linear in the inventory level. The storage capacity enters only in the computation of the constant term of the value function. The solution of the dynamic programming equation leads also to the optimal purchasing strategy of agencies with different levels of flexibility in their policy: in the model, an agency can be allowed or not to resell from the stock and it can have finite or infinite storage capacity.

Environnement et petites usines hydroélectriques

The rise in the price of oil products has, in France as elsewhere, enhanced the value of other energy sources. Recent decisions are in particular intended to facilitate the development of small hydroelectric plants, which in certain areas are the only cost-effective ones. However, it happens that the changes made to the aquatic environment are sometimes out of ail proportion to the amount of energy that can be expected from them, as these installations are often sited in the last remaining natural zones in mountainous regions or on those rare sections of watercourses that have not yet been developed. The effects of small hydroelectric power stations on the environment are not significantly different from those of larger installations. Building an obstacle to the natural flow of the river and the diversion of ail its water result in substantial modifications to the hydrological regime of the watercourse, the speed of the current, the extent of flooded zones, the transport of sediment, water temperature, and the possibilities for diluting polluting effluents. These modifications tend to impoverish the aquatic flora and fauna, leading to the disappearance of the most sensitive species, which are often the rarest. The result is often a very homogeneous environment; this tendency affects ail the species, and in particular the fish population, with the disappearance of the Salmonidae. The scenery, too, is often altered by the architecture of the installations, the movement of earth, the creation or widening of watercourses, and deforestation, particularly in mountainous areas, thus removing the interest from a natural countryside which is often of exceptional beauty. Since hydroelectric energy has already been exploited for a long time in France, most of the sites with a useful energy yield have already been equipped. Thus, in the Ariege departement in the Pyrenees, nearly three quarters of the large rivers have been diverted from their natural beds, and the flows maintained in the river are quite inadequate to ensure preservation and diversification of the aquatic flora and fauna. The situation is the same for numerous rivers in the Alps and the Massif Central. New hydroelectric power stations can therefore only be built in those last sections of the watercourses that have not yet been developed and which consequently often have a considerable value as part of the national heritage. For this reason, regulations have recently been published to control the construction and operation of such installations in order to ensure that the project does not deteriorate the local environment too much: the authority responsible for the future station is required to present a complete impact study measuring the effects of the various proposed installations and of their operation on the aquatic environment and on the countryside. This implies that first of ail a careful inventory must be made of this environment and this countryside. Based on the results of this impact study, various constraints are then imposed on the operator; these concern in particular the flow to be maintained in the natural bed of the river, and in general this flow must not be less than the normal flow in the driest month of the year. Similarly, the power lines have to be buried and the architecture of the buildings made to conform to the traditional local style. These measures also lead to the establishment of a programme for the use of the waters in each hydrographic basin, by ensuring balanced energy development that enables the other uses made of the water to be preserved, including those for leisure purposes, and the quality of the environment to be maintained. Series C. (3 to 25 m of head, 2 to 50 kW) This series exists in several versions for operation out of the water or immersed. These small sets, which are of simple design (no multiplying gear) and robust construction are ideal for quantity export (developing countries). These micro power stations are delivered with complete electrical equipment for use either on an isolated autonomous network or interconnected with other energy sources. For isolated networks, Leroy Somer has developed an electronic energy-absorption regulator which stabilizes the electrical characteristics (voltage 0 ± 10%, frequency 0 ± 0,5 %). On an isolated network this electronic regulation enables asynchronous generators to be used, with ail their advantages: robustness, reliability, price. The ease of use and performance are comparable to those of a normal generating set, without its disadvantages (less reliability, maintenance). The development of micro power stations assumes that competent engineers are available for the consultant studies (hydrology, civil engineering, electricity distribution), which represent an important part of any project. Despite certain difficulties which are being experienced, there would appear to be an assured long-term future for micro power stations both in the industrialized countries and in the Third World.

THE SHORT‐TERM EFFECT OF DOMESTIC OIL PRICE INCREASES ON THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMY WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR

The rise in the domestic price of oil products implied by the new import parity pricing policy for domestic crude oil is likely to pose some problems for macroeconomic management. In this paper an attempt has been made to quantify the short‐run adjustment problems involved, using the ORANI 78 model of the Australian economy. Results are presented for a range of variables of interest, including macroeconomic variables, industrial and workforce composition and farm incomes. With fixed real wages, farm incomes are projected to decline by between 6 and 8 per cent.

Conservation: Is It Justified in the Public Interest

One of the criticisms of the conservation program is that conservation does not promote public welfare but is a private price maintenance scheme. This article analyzes the achievements of the conservation program and concludes that although the effect of conservation is to stabilize existing prices, information available with respect to the rate of return on investment of oil companies would indicate that prices of crude oil and petroleum products are not inordinately high. This article also discusses the sources of economic inefficiency in the oil industry and suggests that efforts be taken to make conservation more efficient.

Some problems in fixing the prices of petroleum and oil products (discussion)

Some problems in fixing the prices of petroleum and oil products (discussion)