I know that there have been pipeline problems and refinery fires, but fuck me to tears. I just saw the price of regular go up $.30/gal in 9 hours. It was $4.23/gal when I drove to school, and $4.53/gal when I drove home!
And the usual right-wing hate-radio types (San Diego’s Roger Hedgecock, for one) are blaming it on Obama.
Gasoline prices go up: Obama’s evil!
Gasoline prices go down: (silence)
Gasoline prices go up: Look at what Obama has done!
Gasoline prices go down: (total silence)
Suppose Obama did have control over gas prices: why would he want them to go up? It hurts the economy and delays recovery. This will prevent people from getting hired (as drivers, just for one example.)
Suppose Obama trucks millions of gallons of oil from the strategic military reserves, to help bring prices down: would the right-wing hate-mongers applaud him for doing the right thing? Ya think?
I accidentally got lucky. I filled my tank on Tuesday morning at a station on Burbank for $4.17. Wednesday that same station was $4.43. Today, it was $4.67. My eyes almost bugged out of my head when I saw the sign.
Unless California cars can run on straight crude, this wouldn’t help much. The gas prices are up in California relative to the rest of the country because of refinery outages and shortage of gasoline within the state. There’s plenty of refinery capacity in the rest of the country, but to get it to California, it has to be shipped there and that’s not free.
The regular attendants that put the prices up with a pole are on strike. They’re using replacements and apparently they’ve not quite got the correct process down pat yet.
A week and a half ago I filled my tank at $4.17. This morning it was $4.59. Clearly this is a plot by Obama to make us shift our focus from his shitty debate performance onto something else. I blame Bush.
I’ve pretty much given up hope on seeing prices drop significantly. Between global demand and economic desirability of domestic production jobs I just don’t see congress putting much pressure on the oil companies to reduce their profits.
Ah, that explains what I’ve been looking at. Filled up on Wednesday at $3.99 and am driving to N Cal. Had to buy $4.39 - used to be cheaper up here, guess it still is.
It’d be refined elsewhere, then shipped here…and yeah, not for free, but the difference would still be less than what we’re being gouged for now.
(There’s some talk of relaxing environmental standards to allow us to refine more, more quickly. Wow… That’s a dilemma from hell. Our air standards still are about as bad as anywhere in the U.S. But our prices are also the worst in the U.S. Ugh. Headaches just thinking about it…)
I sometimes think the oil companies are just looking for excuses to raise oil prices. A border dispute between Turkey and Syria? So what? Neither is a major oil producer. Thailand produces more oil than Syria. And Japan produces more than twice as much oil as Turkey.