Why Are Gas Prices So High?

Why do people blame the fuel companies for high gas prices?

Although oil comapnies are recording record profits, they've been making 8 cents of profit per galon for years now. This hasn't changed, people simply buy more gas. Oil companies have been recording record profits for the last 15 years. It's OPEC's fault (and, frankly, ours too for not pumping more out of Alaska.) So why do people blame the oil companies they're just running a buisness well. They want to lower the price as much as they can to get the edge over their competitiors.

Public Comments

1. Because they're looking for someone to blame
2. you are correct
3. Because when Congress has a hearing to try and figure out why the prices are so high, the oil CEO smirks and the next day, the prices get higher. The oil companies are not trying to lower prices to increase competition (that's the way capitalism works). Besides, I don't quite believe that comment about their profits. Gas consumption has gone DOWN (I saw it on Yahoo! Green). As prices have gone up, we've driven less, bought less gas and yet the oil companies make more money each year when they sell less product. It's not that OPEC isn't to blame (they are key in the problem too) but the oil companies are hardly innocent.
4. As an Alaskan, I agree about your comment on not removing enough oil form Alaska. Everyone knows that ANWR (the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge) is plum full of oil. However, high gasoline prices cannot be blamed on the oil companies. Its a matter of supply and demand. As I have said on numerous occasions, the more that a product is desired, the higher a price the manufacturer gets to charge for it. Assume that tomorrow, half of the dairies in the US go out of business. As a result, milk prices would skyrocket. If a third of the milk produced in the US was exported, then the prices would raise even more, since the rest of the world would be more willing to pay as high a price, if not higher, than Americans. So it is the same for oil. Oil producing countries in the middle east are able to charge a higher rate for oil since China is consuming a much larger amount now, as opposed to five years ago. The more that the Chinese manufacture cars and other fossil fuel burning products, the higher the prices will go. Supply and Demand.