With gas prices roaring past $3 a gallon and consumer fury rising even faster, Congress and the White House are engaged in a Kabuki-like ritual: pointing fingers at each other over who's to blame, while furiously attacking Big Oil for reaping gargantuan profits - as drivers get hosed at the pump.Fine. We'll blame Big Oil for half and Washington for half. Either way, American consumers are being hosed.If the politicians really want to figure out who's responsible for the latest round of price increases, though, they'd be better off looking in the mirror. That's because the rise isn't only due to higher crude costs. It's also fallout from some little-noticed provisions in the energy bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush last summer.
Adds Larry Goldstein of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation: "The gasoline crisis is made in the U.S.A., not in Iran or Venezuela or Nigeria. At least half the increase in gasoline prices is due to unintended consequences of the energy bill, but no one in Washington wants to admit that."
2006-05-03
$3-a-gallon gas: Blame Washington, not Big Oil
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2 comments:
Nadir: How can we blame "big oil" for *any* of the increase, then their profit margin has remained constant, at about 12%, which is less than many other industries.
The govt-created cause of price increase sounds right to me; I blame our do-gooding governers for this. I also blame them for banning oil production on US preserve land, and interfering with the construction of new refineries and nuclear power plants.
My prediction: low petro fuels will come again, so long as the govt stays out of it.
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