Gas price gouging worse than ever
The recent letter by R. Calderwood was certainly timely and relevant to the current price-gouging we are now seeing for gas. I found it interesting that my name was mentioned as someone who shares his views on the subject and I have submitted some letters to your paper in the past.
While Mr. Calderwood makes some excellent observations about how we are bing grossly overcharged for gas, I would like to use some actual numbers to show just how egregious this situation is right now.
Even though it was several years ago, I remember when crude oil was at about $100 per barrel, far higher than the current price of about $60. This was around the time when we were shocked to see gas go to a full $1 per litre. We were told by the oil companies that gas prices were directly linked to the value of crude oil, even though the price of a barrel of oil is just an arbitrary number determined largely, I suspect by speculation.
The fact that crude is now around $60 per barrel and we are paying above $1.30 for gas should make it quite obvious that price gouging is worse than it has ever been.
Even though Mr. Calderwood’s suggestion of boycotting specific gas companies could be effective if done on a huge scale, I fail to see how this action could ever be effectively organized.
I think with the upcoming federal election we should be putting pressure on the candidates to address this consumer abuse, even to the point of using some legislation to bring about charges against oil companies. However, given the huge amount of money governments collect from gas taxes, I doubt this will happen without some massive pressure from the voters. Unfortunately, Canadians have always been very passive when it comes to consumer abuse, so I am not very optimistic we will see any change in gas prices after the election.
K. Beaumont
Duncan