Over A Barrel!!!! Oil Companies Suck

Over a Barrel. A whole country. A whole world. Right where Exxon/Shell/BP, etc. wants us.

Oil prices at record highs. Storms send prices skyrocketing even higher. The State of Michigan just approved a 50% rate hike for natural gas for the upcoming heating season. Personal debt rose 2.7% in a single month!!! More credit cards were paid late last month than ever before in history. What's going on?

It's easy. People cannot affort $2.79 a gallon for gas. They also can't afford to lose their jobs, so they have to have gas to get to work. The solution? Put the gas on a credit card and worry about it later....hoping that gas prices will fall soon. The result? Months of putting gas on cards has your limits up and your minimum payments up. You can't make the minimum payments. Then you can't get gas. Then you lose your job just in time to see the first natural gas bill hit the mailbox.

I heard a politician say "We have to cut our dependence on foreign oil." How original. How stupid. We have to cut our dependence on international gas companies. Do you know how many refineries have been built in the last 25 years in the US? ZERO. Do you know how many refinery facilities have been shut down in the past 25 years in the US? 59! Fifty-nine.

Our dependence upon foreign oil is only one part of the equation. The gas companies (which are oligarchies that have conspired to set high prices based upon reduced supply) are the ones who have us over the barrel. It isn't natural disasters that cause the price of gas to rise after a storm. It is the fact that the oil companies have systematically and intentionally shut down refineries to limit production and restrict supply. Why? So that any disruption or threatened disruption will spike prices.

Has it worked? Just look at oil company stock prices and bottom lines. Record profits! They have absolutely no incentive to increase supply. They have no incentive to build new refineries.

The US Government should step in. If oil is crucial to our national economy, why does the US Government sit back and let oil companies dictate reduced supplies to our nation's detriment? Either break up the oil companies under the Sherman Antitrust Act or get into the refinery business and compete with the guys who are intentionally causing such skyrocketing prices.

Who would buy gas from the US Gas Company? I would.

Blawgerman