littledog

Oh,OK. that's makes sense. I do have a general mistrust of politicians so I was just curious.

MarkS

But the prices went down before elections and up after ... in states like CA which have their own refineries and seaway access to fuel. And it has happened repeatedly. And individuals from consumer action groups (not just conspiracy freaks) like UCAN have recognized the trend.

The idea that the "free market" controls everything down to the last penny is clearly untrue. Oil producers have some latitude in how they "tune" the price of their products. To paraphrase Randolph Hearst "Free markets are for those who own one"

Conspiracies do happen ... especially whenever things are decided by a small groups of people. It doesn't require fraternal organizations or secret handshakes -- just a few people with power and a need to keep it that way. Remember the ADM price-fixing scandal? Or the developer who succesfully bribed representative Cunningham to prevent laws getting passed? Or Enron creating "real and imaginary shortages" to gouge the State of California. The conspiracies that are caught are just the tip of the iceberg.

Gosh, refinery fires in Canada too? They claimed the same thing in CA a couple years back. You wouldn't expect these places to be routinely catching fire 100 years into the technology cycle.

xyz

Because they have always thought that prices at this level would cause major economic disruption. Now that they know this is not the case anymore they are just going to keep prices at this level from now on.

Platy

That could be true. If so, OPEC will have to answer to Dick Cheney. (Isn't Saudi Arabia in need of a bit of democratization?) They would also be running the risk of triggering a move to conservation, energy alternatives and development of new supplies. When that happened before, it collapsed the price of oil for 15 years and badly hurt the OPEC countries. It coincided with the mother of all economic booms here in the US. If that's what OPEC is up to, I'm all in favor.

More disturbing to me is the possibility that OPEC (Saudi in particular) simply can't produce quite enough oil to meet the demand. Right now, no one knows for sure.

I-Like-To-Bike

That's OK. You came to the right place to stir up a buzz about the oil swilling evil doers and their nefarious plots and webs of deceit. Facts are irrelevant when there is a whiff of a conspiracy, eh?

GGDub

Not to spoil a good conspiracy theory, but aren't all federal US elections always held in November? Isn't this the time when people take the least vacations? (After summer, before christmas).

As much as I'd like to believe GWB and his cronies could manipulate the price of gas, we are talking about a guy who drove his own oil company into the ground. You'd think if he could manipulate fuel prices then he would have been able to manipulate his financial statements to make his company successful.

MarkS

But its not GWB -- its a conglomerate of interested parties who recognize the value of not being in the scopes during election times. They would do the same thing no matter which party was in the Whitehouse. Once again, there are lots of examples of conspiracies including ones involving energy -- everything from Teapot Dome to Enron.

The alternative is to say that the oil companies and producers are helpless: They have no control -- not even a few pennies worth -- over the price of oil products. Believing that would take more faith than believing in a mild, temporary conjunction of interested parties.

Based on the least-vacations theory, we would expect a study drop in prices after New Years. Doesn't seem to happen.

xyz

This is also true, except for the saudi part. Saudi is the only place with any spare capacity right now. When a demand spike happens, instead of supplies increasing the price increases. This is not perement, but it's going to take a few years for more capacity to be added. They are making moves towards steam injection in the middle east now.

One problem is the oil goverments. They spend all the oil money and don't invest in future production, Mexicos big field is in decline but they don't allow forein investment. Just pray the fools in congress don't create a Mexican system here.

https://www.axcessnews.com/modules/wf...rticleid=13167

This next link is thought to be a plot to destroy us.

https://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/p...lsupply04.html

Some really cool tech here. Supertrains to move natural gas around and deep sea drilling with everything on the seafloor.

https://www.geoilandgas.com/businesse...6/bellamy.html

Digital imaging is another cool thing. Now when they drill the bits have all kinds of sensors and have fiberoptic connections to big computers that can map out the fields to find the best place to get the most oil. They can also us it in old fields like gawhar that have been flooded with seawater to keep pressure up. The water can form damns that block the oil, using this they can put new wells in the correct position to get at this oil.

xyz

That's what I say, the price declines were because of the end of the driving season and because the gulf production and refining were coming back online.

DogBoy

Around here gas prices kept dropping with the lowest prices being in late Jan, early Feb. They have slowly risen a bit, but are still at prices lower than they were in Nov (by my recollection, I could be wrong). Anway, there is more than the least vacation theory to support price movements. Much of the NE uses oil to heat their homes...this increases demand for oil, and hence gas prices go up. This is especially true for Diesel...Diesel is very often much less expensive in summer due to this very reason. Anyway, with the globalization of the oil markets, I very much doubt that any US politicians could impact the price of oil dramatically for anything other than very short periods of time.

GGDub

Sorry man, I gave a quick scan to see if someone else had brought it up and missed your post. I'm in total agreement though.

I think the idea of collusion among oil execs is pretty hard to believe. These guys are always looking for a leg up on each other and getting them to all cooperate to the point where they could even try to manipulate prices is highly unlikely. Even if they could come to an agreement, they would still have to try to control the price of oil, the demand for gas, the cost of refining (which includes electricity, labour, transportation,etc) all the while why trying to meet shareholder expectations for dividends and stock value.

jdeane4

The nicest thing for me, is until I noticed this post, I havent even noticed gas prices. I mean, I have driven my car twice in a month and a half (Not completely carfree). Therefore I havent even gone to the gas station yet. It is so nice not driving.

Roody

The only time I notice is when I see it on the news, or hear co-workers whining about it.

wahoonc

Now that's the truth. There is a local television station in Charleston, SC that twice a day just has to tell you where the lowest gas prices in the tri-county area are. Jeeze Louise are people actually stupid enough to drive 30 miles to a different area to save a nickel a gallon? I unfortunately still use fuel/gas, but I don't agonize over the price and really don't worry much about it at all. I don't like it, I have no control over the price, only the amount I use, so why worry about it. I am working my way out of my current job to one that will allow me to go car lite and spend more time at home where I can devise other methods of energy savings and general thrifty living.

Aaron