Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to begin by directing my question to Mr. Huffaker.
I understand consolidation, and our earlier witnesses talked to consolidation in the retail industry and a lot of the issues around throughput, how to generate the volume on thin margins. I believe the retailers used a margin of 5%--which I have to believe is a gross margin--and from there they deduct all their hard costs, including credit costs and some of what we heard about earlier in the testimony.
Mr. Huffaker, could you just give us a brief understanding, for those of us who are new to this committee, of how the price of a barrel of oil is constructed, how that throughput factor affects the retailer? I don't know if you have that experience, but I'll leave it with you. As I was thinking of it, one of the other retailers talked about a 48-hour turn on his inventory, and obviously that's part of the throughput--you have to put more through, and the faster you put it through, obviously, the better you are at recovering on your margin.
I wonder if you could just talk about that thought on constructing the cost of a barrel. I'd be appreciative if you could also comment on the Canadian perspective relative to speculation. We heard some of that earlier, and Mr. Greenberger has just referred to that as well.