Some back-of-the-envelope figures:
Northwesterners buy about 20 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel a day.
The price of that fuel has increased about 75 cents a gallon since the year began. (See the trend here.)
That’s an extra $15 million a day. And almost all of it drains right out of the region, because we’re an oil-importing region. Aside from slightly higher margins retained by the region’s few oil refineries, the money is lost from our regional economy-a giant oil leak.
