The hot summer months are the boom time for U.S. gasoline sales, and naturally the season when refiners are all-in on pumping out the motor fuel for drivers on U.S. highways. But an unusual glut of gasoline – just as refiners are ramping up to produce more – has caught them on the wrong side of distillate margins for the second time in less than 12 months. Instead of minting bigger profits on refining gasoline, they are seeing margins shrink because of oversupply, potentially leading to disappointing earnings. U.S. gasoline inventories are currently about 9 percent above their five-year average, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The gasoline oversupply has presented refiners with the unusual dilemma of whether to switch summer output toward distillates. It is a mirror image of what happened with […]