06-13-07 by dugan
Oil companies are like the bad boyfriend who reacts only enough to prevent you from leaving, and keeps lowering your expectations. That’s our situation with gasoline hovering above $3.00 a gallon nationally, and just over $3.25 in California.
At this time last year, with prices in the same range, we were all enraged. The gap between the price of crude oil and the price of gasoline was at record levels and the cries of pain at the pump were heard in Washington and Sacramento. Threats of gas-gouging legislation and other action ensued, only to mysteriously vanish at the end of summer.
This year, $3.30 is billed as relief, after California’s $3.50 record high last month. Gasoline prices have faded from the agenda of talk radio and TV news, despite warnings of much worse to come—especially if there’s a Gulf hurricane or one more big refinery outage.
At the same time, the Wall Street Journal reports that oil companies are cutting back on previously announced plans to expand U.S. refinery capacity. That’s the boyfriend’s next caddish disappointment.
Companies complain about the cost of steel, the cost of labor, the lack of skilled engineers—even as Exxon alone rakes in quarterly profits of at or above $10 million, one record over another. It’s the same for Chevron and all of Big Oil except for the bumbling BP. These companies all make more money by refining less gasoline, so they do.
Why spend on production capacity if it might drive down prices? How about for national security? How about to protect the U.S. economy? That, friends, is the difference between the bad boyfriend and Big Oil—sorrow reaped on a national scale.
The legislative outlook is just a little better than last year. Theres’ a chance that the federal energy package will emerge from Congress with provisions to curb price gouging at the refinery level, end “hot fuel” ripoffs (bill under construction), and—possibly–to increase the gasoline supply (in the talking stages). Funding for biofuels could come from the cancellation of superfluous federal royalty payments to Big Oil.
Unfortunately, conservation and biofuels measures are threatened by, among others, the coal industry (which demands a subsidy for filthy coal-to-fuel operations) and automakers (who stick to the suicidal position that they can’t afford to build lower-mileage cars and trucks).
In Sacramento, there’s one very good bill by Asm. Mike Feuer to gather more detailed information about refineries, including costs and profits as well as supplies, one halfway-there bill by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez to verify refinery outages and one study-it-to-death idea that would effectively prevent any fix to the “hot fuel” ripoff for two years.
What will make the difference? Possibly you. Yeah, it’s hard to stay engaged when looking at the array of special interests throwing money and threats at lawmakers. But you should sign every petition and make every call, e-mail every lawmaker. More numbers help balance the special interests.
Start with OilWatchdog’s petition to push Sacramento on gasoline prices. Here are sites that give you info on your members of Congress (Senate and House—use site to find name, then e-mail from there or go to Rep.’s site to get phone and other contact info) And if you’re in California, here’s a central site to find your representatives and key leaders.
And of course, support the parent organization of OilWatchdog, and others who are fighting in person to keep consumer protections alive.
Don’t however, heave a sigh of relief at gasoline prices just because they’re a tad under the latest outlandish record. That’s succumbing to abuse.