GNAT LILEKS, GENIUS FINANCIAL ANALYST:

“how much did it cost to fill up, daddee? Because if it’s over twenty bucks for the first time in a long time you’re less inclined to go inside the station to get some high-profit items like soda or jerky, or buy a car wash ticket, right? And since the profit margin for gas on the retail level is constantly miniscule, and since high-profit items help repay the loans to the oil company that fronted you money for pumps, upgrades, canopies and the like - then aren’t these high oil prices hard on the individual stations, increasing their likelihood of defaulting on their loans from the company? Granted, they can take the hit from losing a station here or there, but might not this continual erosion of the consignee’s profit margin tempt them to switch to another brand who’d pay off the old loan, leading to market-share erosion? I mean, people think high gas prices are great for gas companies, but that’s a rather simplistic take. Isn’t this side-effect of high gas prices on the stations completely ignored by the press, which sees Big Oil as a monolithic octopus yanking all the levers with ingenious synchronization?”