A Few Words about the Price of Gas

I flipped when CNN ran a banner a few weeks ago saying that the price of gas was the lowest it has been in years.  I KNEW that was not true, because, being on a limited income and living out in the boonies, a few cents a gallon up or down adds up.  Politicians, and organizations that represent the oil and gas industry, have been playing fast and loose with the price of gas since forever, but I have been fascinated with the way they are working the public since the price finally began to come down a few years ago.

But going back into the painfully high gas prices of the Bush era (here in SC I remember paying nearly $4/gallon before the price began its drop), the right-wingnut cry was for -- you guessed it -- more freedom for the gas and oil industry:  Drill, Baby, Drill.  If that had been the most stupid thing Sarah Palin said during the 2008 campaign, I believe history might have been really different, because promising to lower the price of gas by drilling appealed to an awful lot of Americans.

And sadly, from fracking and resultant earthquakes, to pipelines and the leaks and spills caused by poor design and maintenance, to coal mining and its risk to workers due to its inherent danger and abhorrent safety practices, it has been nearly impossible to counter the demand for more and yet more oil.  The siren song of more jobs has been magnified by Trump's narcissistic rendition of reality.  He promised 28,000 jobs as he signed the executive order allowing the building of the Keystone pipeline.  It is actually two to four thousand temporary jobs while it is being built and 35 permanent jobs when finished.  The truth comes too late; the industry pockets its profits and we are forced to deal with the environmental and human disasters.  And the price of gas doesn't go down.

Newt Gingrich bloviated about the price of gas when he ran his pathetic presidential campaign in 2012, claiming that Obama intended to get the price of gas up to $8 to $9 a gallon, and he alone could get it down to $2.50.  And yet, when the price of gas went down as low as $1.50 last year, someone in the crowd at a Hillary rally had to shout out at the President about the low price of gas, because nobody was talking about it.  Of course, Dems, unlike republicans, are reluctant to take credit for something they haven't had anything to do with.  But Obama's stealth energy policy (again, nobody bragging about accomplishments) had managed to make gas cheaper without trashing the environment.  And unemployment declined without all those dirty energy jobs being added; in fact, renewable energy has created hundreds of thousands of jobs in the US.

So what has been happening to the price of gas, really?  A three-year chart shows the plummeting of gas prices in 2014 and 2015, only beginning a steady rise in February of 2016, as tension mounted around the presidential campaign.

After the election which promised to shitcan environmental regulations and give a go-ahead to fuel industry rape and plunder, it seems the Wall Street speculators are ready to party.  And just as they did during the Bush years, the media is reporting the gains as though there will be no dark side, ever.  But as the price of oil goes up, the price of gas at the pumps goes up.

But here is the thing that really drives me nuts.  The price doesn't just go up and up and up.  There is a method to the madness of the oil industry.

When I check the price of gas as I leave my Wadmalaw Island home and venture out to Johns Island and civilization, I see that it has gone up TEN CENTS a gallon since the last time I passed, a couple days earlier.  The very next day it goes down four or five cents.  Well, that feels like a relief, doesn't it?  And then it goes up a couple more cents, maybe down a penny.  This goes on for a month or two, and then steadies.  Until it goes up another ten cents, and the shock is followed by relief which eventually leads to being acclimatized to the big hike and ready for the next wave.

In November, the price of gas by me was $1.59 a gallon.  Today it is $2.19.  Last week it was $2.09.

At some point, when people start complaining, the oil industry will produce some rationale for the hike.  Nobody will be there to debate whatever reason they give.  We will have pipelines producing a handful of jobs and drilling destroying our earth, and we will be tightening our belts to buy gas, just like we did in the good old days of the Bush administration.


By the way, here in South Carolina we have been waging the battle of the gas tax for years, until our roads and bridges got so damned bad they finally passed the hike.  I am sure that many of our less informed citizens will be quick to point out that the rise in the price of gas is due to the tax hike them damn liberals voted in.  Actually, the price of the gas tax in South Carolina did go up in June, by two cents a gallon.  So please feel free to poke a hole in that one when it floats by.