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Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

Big Oil’s Strategy for Jacking Up Gas Prices

Author:     ALEXANDER JUNG and ALEXANDER NEUBACHER
Source:     Der Spiegel (Germany)
Publication Date:     4/5/2012
 Link: Big Oil’s Strategy for Jacking Up Gas Prices
Stephan:   I am writing this on the plane as I fly to Tucson to present a paper at the big consciousness research conference held there each year. To get to the airport from my island I take the shuttle, which we meet at a gas station. As we were sitting there I looked up and saw that gas had gone up nearly a quarter a gallon in the past three days. Surprise, suprise. Not. It happens every Easter, or Christmas, or Fourth of July, as you have probably noticed yourself. Mainstream media will not really cover this story, except to report the price increase, so I went searching to see if some real journalists outside the U.S. have done work on this trend. They have. This story is centered on Germany, but the basics of the report are the same as those found in the U.S. As you read this remember that Big Oil owns, or at least rents, a passel of Senators and Representatives to do its bidding, and they make sure that billions of dollars of subsidies also roll in to Big Oil each year. One just can't make too much profit -- who cares about the social consequences.

It’s Easter weekend and, if all goes as usual, motorists will be hopping mad during the holiday. Their frustration will boil over when the needle reaches the red zone and they pull into the nearest filling station: first at the pump, then at the cash register.

That’s where they’ll note with dismay that the oil companies never tire of playing the same old game in the run-up to Easter. As in previous years, gas prices soared in the days leading up to the Friday before Easter — just when millions of Germans head off on vacation.

In 2009, prices jumped by as much as 11 euro cents per liter ($0.54 per gallon) compared to weeks prior, as was documented in the Cologne area by a report released last year by Germany’s Federal Cartel Office. At the time, the Bonn-based anti-trust agency said it was ‘plausible’ that the oil industry was ‘purposely raising prices.’

The study generated a great deal of attention, but failed to impact business practices in the sector because the Cartel Office was unable to prove that the companies had engaged in illegal price-fixing. Now, one year after the report’s release, the profiteering practices of the oil companies have reached such […]

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