On Monday, the price of oil hit about $47 per barrel — meanwhile, the price of gasoline was still about the same as it has been for months.

It seems that there’s no lag between when oil goes up and when the price increases at the pump, so why does it take forever for the price at the pump to reflect the price of oil?

As Wyoming residents, we depend on oil being profitable. It doesn’t matter if you are employed by an oil company or not, the economic benefits the oil and gas industry brings to our state are undeniable.

Oil impacts our assessed valuation, which means revenue for local governments. It also employs a large portion of our population, which means more people spending money in the area.

But, if Wyoming has to suffer through this downturn in oil prices, then why aren’t we at least reaping the benefits when we fill our gas tanks?

In the last month, oil has dropped from $62 per barrel to $47. Meanwhile, the average price of gas in America has gone from $2.05 to $1.87, according to NASDAQ.  Of course, these numbers do not include the cost of transporting it or taxes placed on top of the price which are used for road maintenance.

Locally, the price at the pump was 2.75 in Powell and $2.85 in Cody on Monday.

But, the gas that’s filling our tanks today was made from oil sold several weeks prior — so let’s stretch out the time frame to three months since it can take about two months for the oil to get refined into gasoline and shipped out for drivers to buy.

Three months ago, gas was about $1.95 and oil was about $61, according to NASDAQ.

Bear in mind that these totals are significantly lower than they were at this time last year. But, they do show something equally fascinating and annoying — something economists call asymmetric price transmission, or the “rockets and feathers” pricing phenomenon.

In laymen’s terms, it means the price of gas rises much faster than it falls; hence the name — the price goes up like a rocket and falls back down like a feather.

On average, retail prices for gasoline rise more than four times faster than they fall, according to Matthew Chesnes with the Bureau of Economics Federal Trade Commission in 2010.

Simply proving that the “rockets and feathers” phenomenon exists was hard enough and the cause for it remains up for debate.

Now, before anyone goes pestering our local gas station owners — it’s really beyond their control what the price of gas is since they have to pay whatever the going rate for gas is when they refill their tanks. And, just like anything else for sale, it’s only logical they would sell gas as cheap as possible so that more customers come into their store and buy the real cash cow — food, drinks and other roadtrip supplies.

Now, the price of oil is lower than it was in January when a gallon of gas was at about $1.58, but the price of gas is definitely not close to what it was at that time.

Meanwhile, the value of the oil we are selling is bringing in less return for the state and counties; and our oil workers are facing grim employment obstacles — all while the price remains disproportionately higher at the pump than it seems that it should be.

So for the time being anyway, who is profiting is hidden in the dust from the rocket’s takeoff while we cough up more dough at the pump than we probably should be.