Evidence.
Different blending requirements will result in higher prices for all consumers not just those consumers in the states where the blends differ. Every additional blend, screws up the supply chain for every other blend. Smaller, localized gasoline markets mean fewer refiners participate in them and there is less competition between them. If refiners had but a single national blending requirement there would be a great deal more competition between many more refiners and lower prices, consequently.
I don't have any evidence but the fundamentals, which are that global demand for oil is currently declining and production continues to ramp up. Prices should have broken by now.
I predict that when the longs on WTI and Brent get broken and the shorts take over, the whole price structure will collapse and I don't know where the bottom will be. Last time we went through this in the late eighties the bottom was nine dollars a barrel. Just do me a favor when that happens; don't suddenly change your analysis and say the reason that prices are low and stay low is because the short sellers on WTI and Brent are holding the price down.
