“I think you’ll hear the president say very clearly that he will not tolerate price gouging,” McClellan said.
CNN.com – Bush orders gasoline price probe – Apr 25, 2006.
I don’t really dislike the oil companies making money, and except for it hurting my pocket I don’t even know if the oil companies are doing anything illegal. If they made “normal” profits would anyone be upset with them or would people be upset with the source of oil again?
Tonight I stopped to fill up my gas tank. My fuel gauge is broken on my car (yeah, have to get it fixed). It shows how much gas I have based on how the car “feels” and it had been a while since the last fill up. Per the manufacturer I fill it with premium gas. I drive an SUV so some more pain for that.
A little math here: premium at the Mobil station was $3.459 per gallon (saying $3.46 is way too straight forward), I filled up 14.671 gallons, rounded comes out to $50.75.
Last year we had hurricane Katrina as the excuse. But the real problem here is that gas is driven by supply and demand. Congress wont even make oil company executives swear to tell the truth. What will President Bush do, put Dick Cheney in charge of investigating the oil companies?
Oil companies are (probably) not breaking any laws, they get a pass from the government on whatever they want. Why should they build more infrastructure in or around the U.S.? We have laws that limit that, we have regulations (good or bad) which make it hard to do. Why ruin a good thing when congress and the administration make it easier to rake in the dough than create new infrastructure?
Except for politicians making pointless noise, I expect prices to keep going up.