>> World oil prices jumped briefly on Wednesday after a television station
>> in Tulsa, Oklahoma -- the No. 62 U.S. media market -- posted an
>> erroneous story about a refinery fire on its Web site.
> Someone explain something to me.
> Why would the price of a raw material go up due to a refinery fire?
> It'd be like the price of wheat rising on news of a fire at a Wonder
> Bread factory. I could see the price of gasoline rising, but not oil.
Because it's an open market, and people will buy oil with the expectation that gasoline prices will rise and therefore they can get more for the raw material. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but markets are based on human behaviour, and human behaviour often doesn't make a lot of sense.
I _can_ see some exceptions here, though. For example, if a refinery that specializes in catalytic cracking of heavy oil into light oil is down, I could imagine the prices on light oil could rise. Telecom content? Not so much, since you can't hoard telecom services.
--scott