{"id":613,"date":"2012-06-20T10:58:48","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T14:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/?p=613"},"modified":"2020-07-28T09:56:57","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T13:56:57","slug":"2012-06-20-oil-refiners-settle-hot-fuel-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/2012-06-20-oil-refiners-settle-hot-fuel-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Oil Refiners Settle “Hot Fuel” Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Oil refinery<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“Hot Fuel” sounds like the title of an awesome action movie. \u00a0I’m thinking Speed<\/em>\u00a0meets Under Siege,<\/em>\u00a0set on an oil tanker.\u00a0 I’m kind of upset that the phrase is wasted on a much more boring concept. \u00a0Nevertheless, oil refineries recently heard “hot fuel” as often as they’ll ever want to after getting bitchslapped in the courtroom by science. \u00a0They’ll have to pony up $21.6 million total to resolve claims in this hot fuel suit<\/a>, with the money to be divided between the 50 retailers across the country who brought charges against them. \u00a0So what is this “hot fuel” garbage, anyway?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the summer, when temperatures rise, the volume of liquids expands while maintaining the same amount of matter. \u00a0The molecules are spread further apart, but the number of them stays constant. \u00a0Gasoline, being sold by the gallon, thereby sees an increase in volume without a similar increase in octane, essentially giving you less bang for your buck. \u00a0Oil refineries, however, decided not to account for this discrepancy in bang-per-buck, choosing instead to keep prices near-constant throughout the warm summer months. \u00a0Customers would go to gas stations and, unaware of science as the average customer is, be driven back to the gas station sooner than usual as their cars went through gas more quickly. \u00a0The lawsuits alleged that the companies ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, et al. knew about this whole hot fuel thing and willingly ignored it in the interest of making mad ducats. \u00a0It’s kind of hard to spearhead such a scientifically grueling process as oil refining and not be aware of how liquid volume works, after all. \u00a0So instead of fighting this irrefutable evidence, the oil refineries decide to settle it out. \u00a0Stay in school, kids — science pays!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oil refineries paid $21.6 million to settle claims that they had knowingly kept prices high despite a decrease in the fuel content of their gasoline. In warm summer months, the volume of a fluid expands while keeping the same amount of fuel, essentially creating a gallon of gasoline without as much gasoline in it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[50,517,519,115,97,518,6],"class_list":["post-613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-settlements","tag-consumer-fraud-2","tag-gasoline","tag-hot-fuel","tag-kansas","tag-oil","tag-refineries","tag-settlements-2"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9622,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions\/9622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}