Higher cost of diesel fuel due to maritime usage?

DutchmenSport wrote:
The oil companies will use ANY excuse to raise fuel prices. This just sounds like another excuse so it gives some kind of legitimization to pre-condition us into accepting yet another price hike in our future.

It doesn't make any sense, a mouse is found dead in Bangladesh and it raises fuel prices in Indiana! Yet, they do this all the time for reasons just as ridiculous.

Fuel companies don't need a reason to raise prices. They can set their prices at any amount. Prices are kept in line by competition. Set them too high and the other suppliers will swoop in and take all their business. If the company gets so big that they quash the competition the anti-monopoly laws break them up. This happened in the oil business to Standard Oil. If they conspire together to fix prices, the conspirators can go to jail. Because of this you can be reasonably assured prices are competitive and fair. That is the beauty of free enterprise and the safeguards built into the system. Yes, many companies try to explain the extraneous factors (like that dead mouse that led Bangladeshi' elephants to stop working forcing Bangladeshi construction firms to switch over to diesel fueled construction equipment raising worldwide demand for oil;)) that are effecting pricing, but they are not under any obligation to do so.