re: Would cutting production of midgrade gas help with fuel pricing?

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When it gets really ugly the midgrade will be dropped because it won't be selling.

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Mid-grade is mixed by the retail pump itself.

Again refiners don’t refine to 89 octane that is a blended outcome

There are many logistics that factor into gasoline blending and volumes. There are many consumer based needs for three grades of pump gasoline.
Sure just hypothetically it maybe more efficient and plentiful blending out all 89 octane gasoline. But in actuality it isn’t

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Again refiners don’t refine to 89 octane that is a blended outcome

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I worded poorly. I was asking could 89 be the min and max blend so all underground tanks, sans diesel, just recieve 89 and be done with it.

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Most stations will only have premium and regular fuel tanks, and mid-grade is blended at the pump. It can be made and delivered, but there’s no real purpose in that.

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Learned something new today.

why is there almost always a 10 cents difference between the grades?

Doesn't seem market driven.

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Would cutting the production of midgrade help with more supply and helping bring down prices?

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States that require special formulations create those sorts of problems. The simple grade levels are not specifically blended (or at least not back in the 90s when I did some controls work at a loading rack). THe facility had 2 grades, the regular octane level(around 87, can't recall exactly) and a super octane level because Sunoco sold something like a 102 Octane in the area (Northeast, rack was in RI). Every other Octane level anyon picked up was a mix.

Another thing was that every branded gasoline in that area loaded trucks at that rack (Mobil). Scanned a card that then supplied them with the right mix plus injected the specific additive packages for that brand. The amount of additive injected was pretty small, somewhere around 1/2 ml to a gallon of gas. For reference, 5 ml is about a teaspoon.