Gas price climbs while oil falls

The Associated Press writes this morning that even though oil prices are falling, prices for gasoline continue climbing;

Oil prices fell back Thursday ahead of a report expected to show U.S. inventories of crude and petroleum products grew last week.

Prices remained volatile, though, buffeted about by threats against Nigerian oil facilities, worries about falling gasoline demand in the U.S. and a strengthening U.S. dollar.

That’s those big, bad oil companies getting rich on the backs of working Americans, right? Wrong. The problem is the bottleneck at the refinery stage. OPEC can pump oil as fast as they want and the price for each barrel will fall, but refineries are working at full capacity and can’t meet the demand which drives gas prices up.

We haven’t built a refinery in this country since 1977 – our demand for gasoline has increased, but our capacity to meet the demand hasn’t. Last year, the Democrats in Congress could’ve authorized the building of more refinery capacity, but instead, they chose to send back defeatist legislation for the war and focus on healthcare for the rich.

The President in the meantime, did all he could do by authorizing more exploration of domestic sources for oil, but without Congressional approval, he can’t authorize the building of refineries. So, the Democrats, the party of working people, the party that declared in 1979 they’d wean us off of foreign oil and increase our production capacity, has been more interested in undermining the national economy for purely political reasons.

Category: Economy, Politics