LOOTING ON A GRAND SCALE

leaded

I’m no conspiracy theorist. Especially the anti-capitalist, geo-political type, so this is a little different for me. Gas in my city went up over $0.50 per gallon yesterday. Can anyone tell me how in God’s name the cost to extract and process a gallon of gas increased 20% in 3 days?

Supply and demand? Hell, no! I realize that the rigs in the Gulf of Mexico have to be shut down for a couple of weeks, but so far only 1 rig has been lost due to the storm and it washed into shore and will be salvaged. A 2 week loss of the oil these rigs produce is less than 2% of our total consumption for the year. Vacation time has ended, school started. There are thousands of vehicles underwater or destroyed in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama that won’t be using a drop. Demand is down. President Bush Yesterday released some reserves ostensibly to buck up supplies. Therefore supplies are up.

I’m also no economist and the oil business is complex (at least that’s what we consumers are always told), but I thought supply and demand ruled the roost in a capitalist system - low demand, high supply; means you can buy a lighthouse for $1 from the government and live in it. Why doesn’t it work for gasoline?

OPEC has always controlled supply from their end - it’s the way they do business and we’ve learned to live with it. But they are a bunch of tinhorn dictators that happen to be sitting on the most valuable commodity in the economy of the world (which, I guess, makes them gold horn dictators, but just as corrupt as the tins). But this is not an OPEC increase; it’s our fellow countrymen in the oil business.

We already know that one of the peccadilloes of the oil business is that prices go up on a moment’s notice. What is in an underground tank below the gas station at 1:00 PM selling for $2.46 a gallon can go to $3.09 at 1:05. That’s some lunacy that we accept nowadays without question. But let’s say that the cost to produce gasoline really did go up %20 overnight. It would still take 2 weeks for the costlier fuel to hit the pumps. During this emergency don’t you think the oil companies could forego the extra profits of raising prices immediately and wait until it actually did get to the consumer before raising the price?

That’s a fairy tale anyway. The cost to produce that gas did not go up. Demand did not go up and the supply loss was offset by the release of reserves.

So what is the difference between a guy looting a store that has been breached by the storm, an innkeeper who jacks up his prices when people are displaced from their homes and an oil company that jacks up prices during an emergency just because they can make it sound plausible? Plenty of difference really, but what they have in common is what makes them so despicable; the willingness to take advantage of your fellow man when he is most vulnerable.

It’s time to let the oil companies know they are no better than Martha Stewart or Ken Lay - let some heads roll!