Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Where are all of you Oil Price Gouging conspiracists now?

* No evidence to suggest that refiners manipulated prices through any means, including running their refineries below full productive capacity to restrict supply, altering their refinery output to produce less gasoline, or diverting gasoline from markets in the United States to less lucrative foreign markets. The evidence indicated that these firms produced as much gasoline as they economically could, using computer models to determine their most profitable slate of products.

* No evidence to suggest that refinery expansion decisions over the past 20 years resulted from either unilateral or coordinated attempts to manipulate prices. Rather, the pace of capacity growth resulted from competitive market forces.

* No evidence to suggest that petroleum pipeline companies made rate or expansion decisions in order to manipulate gasoline prices.

* No evidence to suggest that oil companies reduced inventory to increase or manipulate prices or exacerbate the effects of price spikes generally, or due to hurricane-related supply disruptions in particular. Inventory levels have declined, but the decline represents a decades-long trend to lower costs that is consistent with other manufacturing industries. In setting inventory levels, companies try to plan for unexpected supply disruptions by examining supply needs from past disruptions.

* No situations that might allow one firm � or a small collusive group � to manipulate gasoline futures prices by using storage assets to restrict gasoline movements into New York Harbor, the key delivery point for gasoline futures contracts.

But the one thing that always amazes me is; say the price of oil goes up a couple bucks on a barrel.
The higher price is immediately reflected at the gas Pump.
Now if the prices drops a few bucks on a barrel, the price isn't seen for a few weeks, if at all and usually not comensurate with the barrel price.

One must keep in mind that Big Oil controls only about 5% of the oil reserves [oil in ground] of the world....most of the reserves are controlled by politically unstable countries...Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Columbia, former Soviet Union etc.....but they would never conspire to price gouge the American public would they?

Has anyone missed the point that state and the fed government makes a signifigant amount of tax revenue on oil and gas? In Alaska, state and fed taxes make up about 70% of the price of a barrel of AK crude. I imagine in the Gulf there is a similar spread. There are also sizeable federal and state taxes on gas at the pump.

The government (doesn't matter what party as they all need $) is the biggest beneficiary of high oil prices.