Gas and Oil prices are slipping?
In the Bush and Cheney (both oil people) years gas and oil prices soared with explanations ranging from various shipping and refinery accidents to lack of crude and lack of refining capabilities, unexpected cold weather in the North East and too many cars on the road.. There was a major effort to get added drilling and exploration rights approved saying prices would hit the . to . a gallon price if we did not get additional drilling. They were claiming the governments restrictions on building new refineries were hampering their ability to produce more oil and gas. At the same time an oil refinery in Utah was being closed down. There was a big cut back in gasoline use but it is slowly coming back up and prices have raised slightly in the past 2 months. The oil companies are now saying they have too many refineries and need to shut five or six of them down. Why is it the oil companies always have another excuse for pushing oil and gas prices up. It would seem the oil company executives lack the ability to forecast needs and to control their operations and find it necessary to lie to consumers to keep the prices high. Why don’t they just come out and say it is our business and we will charge what we want? Why do they feel they have to lie to the public?
April 10th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
The oil companies and their buddies, the refineries, manipulate prices to maximize their profit. I’ve been following this for years and it’s never changed. If the price of oil goes up in the morning, the pump price is up by lunch. If the price of oil drops, it takes a week for the pump price to come down a few pennies. Shell attempted to close a refinery in California’s Central Valley but the state government stepped in to stop them. Simultaneous with the the oil companies’ first whine about not having enough refinery capacity, California issued a report stating that the state’s refineries were operating at far less than 100% capacity. Then the companies whined about the permit process preventing them from building new refineries and the states countered with their own documents showing that the states had cleared the way for new refineries.
I read last week about the per barrel price of oil coming down and about OPEC’s announcement that they are going to maintain their oil production to maintain a stable supply. This is news that should cause the pump price to drop but we’re still paying $2.99/gal at the pump and have been for weeks.
April 10th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
What would they gain by doing that? Absolutely nothing.
April 10th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
Hopefully this will continue.