got gas?

[Blown 472]

Profiteering at the Pump
The Great Oil Robbery
By DAVE LINDORFF
In case you're wondering why crude oil prices are down from last year, hanging around at about $60 a barrel, while gasoline prices have soared past $3.10/gallon nationwide, just check out the latest profit reports from the oil companies. They are at record levels.
The answer for this seeming contradiction is simple: Americans are being robbed blind by the oil industry.
Sure, the oil companies, and their PR and lobbying agency, the American Petroleum Institute, will give you all kinds of reasons for higher gasoline prices at a time of falling crude prices: problems at two refineries in Texas and Oklahoma, rising demand or whatever. But the real answer is that there is simply no competitive market in this industry.
As Tim Hamilton, a researcher and petroleum industry consultant with the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, observes, the oil companies all store their crude oil and refined gasoline in the same tanks, and all know exactly how much inventory each other company has, so they don't have to meet and collude on pricing in order to reap the huge rewards of deliberate supply constraints.
Says Hamilton, "Years ago, you had companies that would try to guess when the other companies were going to have supply shortfalls of gasoline in the summer. They'd ramp up their own gasoline refining and then supply the market at a lower price and eat their competitors' lunches, the same way General Motors would do if Ford had a problem on its assembly line. But today, no oil company would do that. They all benefit by keeping the supplies tight."
Hamilton says that the oil industry has in practice conspired to limit refining capacity, so that companies can keep pushing up the price of gas artificially-only they've done this without ever having to meet in secret and cut a deal, because they all have complete competitive information on each others' inventories, internal pricing, and refinery capacity.
"There's no correlation any longer between crude oil prices and gasoline prices," he insists. "Crude could drop to $10/barrel, and you could still have gasoline go to $4/gallon. All the crude oil price does is set a floor on gasoline prices."
As an indication of how much control the oil industry has over retail gasoline prices, Hamilton points to a study he did, looking at the price of gas approaching Election Day. His results are truly disturbing.
The oil industry has been a solid backer of Republicans for many years, giving 80-90 percent of its campaign contributions to GOP candidates-particularly during the two Bush terms. What Hamilton discovered is that this support hasn't just been limited to campaign contributions. In fact, the oil industry appears to have clearly tried to minimize voter anger at Republicans late during the election cycle by pushing prices at the pump down just ahead of the voting. In the period 2000-2006, Hamilton found that each non-federal election year-2001, 2003 and 2005, gasoline prices didn't decline during the month of October, but each of the election years-2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006-they fell, with the most dramatic drop coming in October 2006-a period when crude oil prices were rising sharply. Each time, gasoline prices rose again quickly right after the election was over.
"This is a set of coincidences you'd be hard-pressed to explain by anything but planning," says Hamilton. (And incidentally, it would be interesting, when Congress gets those Karl Rove emails from the Republican Party and the White House mainframe computer, to see if there are any to the American Petroleum Institute.)
The whole situation makes a joke of Bush proposals for opening up the Alaskan North Slope to more oil exploration, or for Republican calls for an easing up on environmental regulations for new refinery construction. Says Hamilton, "The price of oil produced in Alaska will be set in Saudi Arabia, and any new supply of crude from Alaska won't affect American gasoline prices in the slightest. And as for new refineries, why would any oil company want to spent $1 billon or more to add refinery capacity so they could get less money for the gasoline they're selling? There isn't enough money in the federal treasury to subsidize the building of new refinery capacity in America."
The irony here is that it is higher prices for gasoline that might eventually convince Americans to use less gasoline, and to reduce the production of greenhouse gasses. But where those higher prices in Europe come in the form of taxes, which can then be used to subsidize public transportation or retirement and healthcare programs, in the U.S. the higher prices simply go to the bottom line of the oil companies, and into the pockets of oil company shareholders, leaving public transit, retirement and healthcare programs under funded, and leaving lower-income workers stuck with higher bills to get themselves to and from work in their cars.
Until the public recognizes that the illusion of competition carefully maintained by the oil industry and its backers in the government is just that-an illusion-this astounding rip-off will continue.

[Not So Fast]

The oil industry has been a solid backer of Republicans for many years, giving 80-90 percent of its campaign contributions to GOP candidates-particularly during the two Bush terms. What Hamilton discovered is that this support hasn't just been limited to campaign contributions. In fact, the oil industry appears to have clearly tried to minimize voter anger at Republicans late during the election cycle by pushing prices at the pump down just ahead of the voting. In the period 2000-2006, Hamilton found that each non-federal election year-2001, 2003 and 2005, gasoline prices didn't decline during the month of October, but each of the election years-2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006-they fell, with the most dramatic drop coming in October 2006-a period when crude oil prices were rising sharply. Each time, gasoline prices rose again quickly right after the election was over.
As Robin Williams said in the movie "Man of the Year" if you have 2 hundred million (amount doesnt matter) in your campain fund, when you get elected "YOU OWE SOMEBODY" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NSF

[eliminatedsprinter]

The oil industry has been a solid backer of Republicans for many years, giving 80-90 percent of its campaign contributions to GOP candidates-particularly during the two Bush terms. What Hamilton discovered is that this support hasn't just been limited to campaign contributions. In fact, the oil industry appears to have clearly tried to minimize voter anger at Republicans late during the election cycle by pushing prices at the pump down just ahead of the voting. In the period 2000-2006, Hamilton found that each non-federal election year-2001, 2003 and 2005, gasoline prices didn't decline during the month of October, but each of the election years-2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006-they fell, with the most dramatic drop coming in October 2006-a period when crude oil prices were rising sharply. Each time, gasoline prices rose again quickly right after the election was over.
As Robin Williams said in the movie "Man of the Year" if you have 2 hundred million (amount doesnt matter) in your campain fund, when you get elected "YOU OWE SOMEBODY" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NSF
Kinda one sided post don't ya think.:idea: They give huge sums to democrats as well. For example AL Gore's #1 political contributer for his career in elected office was Occidental Petrolium....:idea:

[Blown 472]

Kinda one sided post don't ya think.:idea: They give huge sums to democrats as well. For example AL Gore's #1 political contributer for his career in elected office was Occidental Petrolium....:idea:
THats cuz he owns 250k shares in them, kinda strange for an engine hater.

[bigq]

Just curious if anyone has bitched about how much profit Walmart made, why not cut those store prices more?

[Blown 472]

Just curious if anyone has bitched about how much profit Walmart made, why not cut those store prices more?
Dont shop there cuz they are underhanded bastards.

[SB]

Did you complain in the 90s when gas was .90 /gal.?
I thought not.
Did you notice that Clinton massaged prices to help Gore's election in 2000?
I guess it takes a CA liberal to pass all kinds of laws regulating energy production, then wonder why he is sitting there in the dark.
I have nothing against raising gas taxes. When you raise the tax, people use less gas, and the price goes down.
Why are we using so much? Because gas is cheap. That's right, $3 / gal. is a bargain.
The oil companies/Arabs know that when gas gets a little over $3, we will switch to other stuff.
If you don't like to pay that much for gas, don't buy it.
If you are concerned about oil company profits, buy some stock.
Am I happy we have an oil man in the White House? No, we have ignored nuclear power.

[bigq]

Did you complain in the 90s when gas was .90 /gal.?
I thought not.
Did you notice that Clinton massaged prices to help Gore's election in 2000?
I guess it takes a CA liberal to pass all kinds of laws regulating energy production, then wonder why he is sitting there in the dark.
I have nothing against raising gas taxes. When you raise the tax, people use less gas, and the price goes down.
Why are we using so much? Because gas is cheap. That's right, $3 / gal. is a bargain.
The oil companies/Arabs know that when gas gets a little over $3, we will switch to other stuff.
If you don't like to pay that much for gas, don't buy it.
If you are concerned about oil company profits, buy some stock.
Am I happy we have an oil man in the White House? No, we have ignored nuclear power.
How exactly did Clinton "message" the prices?

[ToMorrow44]

If you don't like to pay that much for gas, don't buy it.
I hate going and buying gas so please tell me the steps to take to just stop buying gas? It's supply and demand, people are going to need/use it so they're going to charge for it.

[eliminatedsprinter]

THats cuz he owns 250k shares in them, kinda strange for an engine hater.
That goes back to his segregationist Dad's ties with Armand Hammer. Occidental Petrolium has been Both Sen Gore's main source of financial support for both of their careers...