Letter: Oil companies experiment with gas price excuses

Thursday, Sept. 18, 2003 | 8:42 a.m.

In the past, leaps in gas prices were blamed on the scarcity of crude oil. This excuse enabled the oil companies to raise their prices at the same time, refuting the notion that competition works in the interest of the consumer.

Now oil companies are testing other excuses, such as the East Coast blackout. Yet gas prices in Las Vegas had gone up 20 cents a gallon a week before the blackout. And never mind that we don't get any fuel from the Eastern refineries that had to be shut down for two days.

Then there was the broken Texas-to-Phoenix fuel pipeline, which doesn't deliver a drop to Las Vegas. The excuse was that oil from California refineries destined for Las Vegas had to be diverted to Phoenix. OK, then raise the price in Phoenix to pay for the increased transportation costs. Why did we have to pay at our pumps?

Then there were the refinery "production problems." But doesn't each oil company have its own refinery? If the refineries of one company go down then a competitive market would have customers gassing up with companies who had kept their refineries going. The fact that all prices went up at the same time means one of two things: Either the oil companies with operating refineries are gouging the public, or all the refineries are producing for all the oil companies. If the latter is true, then why buy one brand of gasoline over another?

A competitive market demands regulation to ensure that competition exists. And the regulators should not be, as they are now, the henchmen of the industry. Our economic system should work for the public as well as for the corporations.

ED HAYES