George Bush, Republicans and their friends do not appear to be manipulating oil prices

[tongodeon]

Gas prices have gone down 17% recently, from $3.15 on August 1 to $2.67 today. I've heard and read several opinions that Bush is manipulating gas prices to increase Republican popularity for the midterm election, and supposedly 42% of Americans think Bush controls oil prices.

On one hand I can't rule it out entirely. It's possible, I suppose,

Comments

[dataghost13]

The fact remains that if the drop of 17% in gasoline prices in comparison to a 22% decline in crude by the barrel any price fixing is only pennies in difference after you figure the cost of shipping it from the buyers location...if there's price-fixing going on then the conspiracy is to LOSE money in the long haul, not to make anything...and they're not losing much...

[tongodeon]

if the drop of 17% in gasoline prices in comparison to a 22% decline in crude by the barrel

There are fixed costs in the oil industry regardless of the per-barrel price: shipping the oil, running the refinery, mopping off the seals, etc. I wouldn't expect gas prices to drop at the same rate as crude prices any more than I'd expect furnished home prices to drop at the same rate as plywood and drywall prices.

[dataghost13]

Weel someone's gotta be greedy right??

[kat89]

No. It's a not a conspiracy, and I do love conspiracies just as much as the next person but.. no. I get the feeling that people are just looking for reasons to dislike Bush.

[mister_borogove]

Why look for reasons to dislike him when he's been shoving perfectly good reasons up our collective ass for years?

Oh. Sorry. My "Bush Derangement Syndrome" is acting up again today.

[mister_borogove]

Not to be a conspiracy theorist, and why yes I *do* know that correlation is not causation, but this graph is fascinating. Since the gas price curve sometimes leads and sometimes lags the approval curve, it suggests that both might be dependent on some other factor.

[dataghost13]

I think that the phenomenon you are referring to is known as the Bushwash factor...

[tongodeon]

It seems beyond "plausible" and well into "extremely likely" that oil prices drive approval ratings and voting behavior. I totally accept that point. To go beyond your point, I also think that the Bush Administration knows this, and is trying to do what little it can to keep oil prices low.

I just don't think that the White House or their friends are doing very much - or can do very much - due to the realities of the market and a corporation's responsibility to put profits before everything else. I don't think they've been either slacking off or intentionally keeping prices high throughout the summer to make the November plunge seem better, any more than I think they intentionally drove up August Iraq combat casualties to make September's drop look better. The Bush Administration is making a constant effort to keep combat fatalities and oil prices low, but I don't think special election-season efforts are responsible for either decline

[sploof]

I just don't think that the White House or their friends are doing very much - or can do very much - due to the realities of the market and a corporation's responsibility to put profits before everything else.

I have no idea how likely it is that there's price manipulation going on, but I disagree that market forces/corporate responsibility would prevent it. We don't have a free market in gasoline in the US, and oil companies can dictate retail price to individual retailers. If Exxon thought it was in their best interest to support some House incumbant, they could tell all Exxon gas stations in that incumbant's district to cut their prices by 20%. It would cost them money in the short term, but so does lobbying; if it results in policies that mean higher long-term profits, they'll eat the short term cost.

On the other hand, I'll happily admit that I'm not an oil industry expert, and there may be all kinds of practicalities that make this completely implausible.

Sure Chavez and Ahmadinejad want to hurt Bush...I wouldn't be so sure

[dataghost13]

prices+election=conspiracy...

I wish I could buy into that possibility, but I can't...now if Bush were the one campaigning for re-election? Hell, then I'd give it a serious shot and possibly find some sort of discrepency somewhere that might indicate the distinct workable possibility for a conspiracy...especially if you could chalk in a reasonable number of Bushite cronies currently on the top tier of the National Oil Cartels...but I'm pretty sure that there's no way of it at this point and juncture...unless there's been some government documents to back some type of temporary price lockdown we're not aware of...but then it wouldn't be conspiracy 'cause we could prove it...

[waider]

every time I read something insightful in tongodeon's livejournal, there you are. Please do me a favour: stop using ellipses, and learn some basic logic and reasoning.

Thank you.

[dataghost13]

Try learning some tact, maybe in your next life...oh I forgot...

[wisn]

There was a very informative post on DailyKOS earlier this week specifically about gasoline commodity prices (which are not the same as oil commodity prices), allegedly from a former oil industries trader. What I got from it was that each of your bullet points were factors, but the second one (no disasters affecting gasoline delivery) was dominant. Speculators who had bet on disasters on the scale of 2005 are dumping their futures to cut their losses, driving prices down even more than the season would ordinarily dictate.