Last night I topped off the fuel tank, getting regular gas at $2.68 a gallon. This was a full two days after the oil futures hit their record high of over $77 a barrel. In past times of oil future run ups, the pump price quickly followed. Sometimes the price would change several times in a single day, always up.
Not that long ago, I paid over $3.00 a gallon for gas. Why the difference? Might I offer two reasons? They include oil company profits and the November elections.
My guess is the oils will show some serious profits in their upcoming quarterly report. As Americans have a short term memory, high 2nd quarter profits will be far from their minds come poll time. Come November their concern will be those 3rd quarter profits, just released to the investment community.
So despite international turmoil and record futures prices for oil, big oil companies may purposefully reduce their profits so as to not send angry Americans to polls. As President Bush’s father knows, people vote their pocketbooks. Will the electricity companies follow suit? Record heat in Texas has many concerned about the affordability of their electricity bills. Does it add up to another inconvenient truth that corporations manipulate their and our pocketbooks to influence the vote?
Evening Update: The price rose to $2.80 still well below last week’s national average of $2.99
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