PUMP PANIC AS PRICES RISE, DEBATE RAGES OVER OIL COMPANIES' ROLE.Byline: THOMAS D Thomas D. (born Thomas Dürr, December 30 1968 in Ditzingen close to Stuttgart, Germany) is a rapper in the German hip hop group Die Fantastischen Vier. He frequently works on solo projects. Life After finishing Realschule he took on an apprenticeship as a barber. . ELIAS JUST in case anyone still believes it's an accident oil companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron and BP and Shell have achieved record profits quarter after quarter during the last few years, here's some information that will utterly debunk de·bunk tr.v. de·bunked, de·bunk·ing, de·bunks To expose or ridicule the falseness, sham, or exaggerated claims of: debunk a supposed miracle drug. such naive naive - Untutored in the perversities of some particular program or system; one who still tries to do things in an intuitive way, rather than the right way (in really good designs these coincide, but most designs aren't "really good" in the appropriate sense). thinking: As of early spring, crude oil prices were several pennies lower per gallon gallon: see English units of measurement. this year than last year. But the pump price of gasoline gasoline or petrol, light, volatile mixture of hydrocarbons for use in the internal-combustion engine and as an organic solvent, obtained primarily by fractional distillation and "cracking" of petroleum, but also obtained from natural gas, by was considerably higher. In February, the average California price of $2.81 was nearly 24 cents higher than a year earlier and 45 cents above the national average. In early April, the average California price of $3.29 was 62 cents over the national average. Today's price of over $3.46 has already topped the previous average statewide high of $3.38 per gallon, with no signs of a ceiling in sight. How can this be happening when oil companies continually tell us, their customers, that fluctuations in the price of crude and refinery problems are the major impetus Impetus is a stimulus or impulse, a moving force that sparks momentum. Impetus may also refer to:
Easy. It's called gouging Gouging can be:
As long as no significant gasoline retailer breaks ranks and the price at the pump remains fairly constant from one street corner to the next within a region, there is no reason for oil companies not to raise prices. So they do. That's how ExxonMobil made a record $9 billion profit during the third quarter of last year (with yearly profits of about half the entire budget of the state of California, to put it into perspective). But Exxon's profits dropped a tad in the fourth quarter, you might note. So did those of the rest of Big Oil. The reason for that was clear and fairly well documented: Oil companies last fall did all they could to keep Republicans in the majority in Congress because no matter how high prices went during its reign, the GOP never did a thing to rein them in. No hearings questioning oil company executives about their pricing practices. No anti-gouging bills. Nothing. And historically, when gasoline prices drop during the fall political season, the party in power stays there. So -- surprise -- prices dropped from last summer's peak average of $3.38 for a gallon of unleaded regular to about $2.20 just before Election Day last November. The prediction here then was that prices would rise gradually starting the week after the election. And they did, quickly. There is, of course, no smoking-gun piece of evidence to prove that oil companies set their prices in concert, acting as a cartel. There is also no hard evidence that a combination of collusion An agreement between two or more people to defraud a person of his or her rights or to obtain something that is prohibited by law. A secret arrangement wherein two or more people whose legal interests seemingly conflict conspire to commit Fraud and political opportunism Opportunism Arabella, Lady squire’s wife matchmakes with money in mind. [Br. Lit.: Doctor Thorne] Ashkenazi, Simcha shrewdly and unscrupulously becomes merchant prince. [Yiddish Lit. led to last fall's unified price drop. This may be because no one has either subpoenaed oil company e-mails and letters or eavesdropped on their telephone calls. It's also because state investigators have repeatedly thrown up their hands in frustration over their inability to get to internal oil company communications of all kinds. Only federal officials have the power to subpoena subpoena (səpē`nə) [Lat.,=under penalty], in law, an order to a witness to appear before a court. A subpoena ad testificandum [Lat. that material, and so far they have not. But the fact is that during last fall, as prices fell, the difference in what oil companies paid for a gallon of crude oil and what they charged for a gallon of gasoline at the pump dropped sharply. From a peak difference of $1.37 per gallon in October 2005 to a low of 85.9 cents per gallon in November, oil company margins fell by more than 50 cents per gallon. But they started to climb once again the moment the election was history, standing last month at $1.22 per gallon. This number means that while oil companies continue to insist there's a direct link between what they pay for crude oil and what they charge for gasoline, that connection has been altered, stretched or eliminated altogether during the last three years. "These figures show that gasoline prices are not about the price of oil, but about maximizing the already obscene Offensive to recognized standards of decency. The term obscene is applied to written, verbal, or visual works or conduct that treat sex in an objectionable or lewd or lascivious manner. profits of oil companies and their refiners," says Judy Dugan, research director for the consumer advocate Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. The newest numbers and the repeated failures of state investigators also combine to show why a full-scale investigation of gasoline pricing should now become one of the highest priorities of the new Democratic majority in Congress. CAPTION(S): 2 photos Photo: (1 -- color) no caption (gas pump, man) (2 -- color) Gas prices at $4 per gallon are displayed at a Shell service station March 30 in San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden . Justin Sullivan/Getty Images |
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