again with the gas prices..., http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413, Options

[mikester]

http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,20...2119362,00.html

What we have here...is someone making a profit...who decides when you're charging too much for something?

Well - these guys are capitalists and they will CHARGE WHATEVER THE MARKET WILL BEAR.

So the only solution is to find some other way to work making fuel in less demand than it is right now.

I say we start a pool - winner gets a 914 hat or something...

Guess what the highest $ per gallon will be on labor day (end of summer).

I'm just saying...

[lapuwali]

I'm quite certain the US oil companies are having a grand time with oil prices as they are. That doesn't mean they're controlling those prices. As far as I'm concerned, US companies are nearly irrelevant in setting oil prices. They are very much material in setting gasoline prices, but since there hasn't been an increase in gasoline prices that can't be directly correlated with an increase in oil prices, I'd say you can't reasonably blame the oil companies for the increase in the price of gasoline.

I believe I also stated that OPEC does indeed to exactly what it wants, within realistic limitations. They can't set the price so high that the economies of the industrialized world would be so harmed that demand fell, nor do they wish to price it so high that sources of energy outside their control become attractive, such as US-based oil supplies, which were not cost-effective at $30/barrel, but may be at $45. The US is not a member of OPEC, the US oil companies would LOVE for the price of oil to be high enough that they could start pumping it out of the ground in Texas and Oklahoma again economically, so long as the price also doesn't choke off demand (people suddenly realize maybe mass-transit IS a good idea, or move closer to work, or start buying home windmills and solar panels in huge quantities, or alcohol fuels start to take off, or...).

Rail against the gummit or Big Corporate America all you like, but real-world forces are what set the prices of most things. You can't just ask any old price you like for something if there's even a ghost of an alternative that costs the same or less. Oil is no different.