These exorbinant gasoline prices in California, and to a lesser degree here and around the rest of the country, are an elaborate shell game, and we are the hapless rubes lining up to pay. In California super high prices are being blamed on refinery fires and pipeline problems, how many times have we seen gas prices go up tied to some vague barely plausible excuse? Out there it is spurring brazen thefts from stations and also peoples tanks with electric siphons. Watch soon for food prices to get tweaked in exactly the same fashion. Our gas prices are controlled by a few people behind the scenes. I knew a guy who bought into the old Uni-Marts a few years back, he tried to drop his gas prices and was "bitch slapped" back to reality in a hurry. Gas prices fly in the face of supply and demand theorys.

Interesting article. But i still think prices are artificially manipulated.

Simple supply and demand, nothing artificial about gas prices unless it is very localized. Example: Gas stations near an airport charging more for a gallon because they will still get all the people re-filling the rental cars before returning them. California and Georgia have their own, state regulated, gas formulations. The gas for each of these states cannot be sold anywhere else. Georgia is typically lower priced due to low taxes. California is always high priced because of taxes.

What i meant was when there is a glut of oil, gas prices should go down - not up. Also oil prices go up and down drastically and gas just keeps going up. Simple supply and demand i guess.

I give. It must be the democrats. After all Obama said energy prices would necessarily go up due to his policies.

Two of the biggest reasons for high fuel prices are taxes and consumer behavior.

http://www.api.org/Oil-and-Natural-Gas- ... x-Map.ashx

That link will show you the tax rate for each state. Pennsylvania for example has a 50.7 tax rate. That means that for every gallon that you pump, $.507 cents goes to local, state, and federal government departments. The gas that I paid for yesterday at $3.95 would be $3.44 without government taxation. Why does that still seem high? Because there are more taxes behind the scene. The truck that transports this has to pay the same taxes on the fuel that it fills up with, and the cost of fuel is added to the line haul, or sometimes paid as a fuel surcharge. The driver has to pay his bills as well, and pay his income taxes. Then you get to the refinery where they have to pay a tax on all the income that they make producing the oil, the cost to pay the workers, part of their tax liability, and then the fees and costs associated with running the refinery like utility and legal fees. It all adds up.

Then you get to diesel taxes which are much more complex. It works the same way for passenger vehicles using diesel as the vehicles using gasoline. When diesel is used in a tractor trailer, it becomes much more complex.

This page will show the tax rates at cents per gallon for diesel.
http://www.api.org/Oil-and-Natural-Gas- ... x-Map.ashx

They are much higher. When you drive a tractor trailer you have to pay for IFTA (international fuel tax agreement) registration. Once registered, you have to keep track of your average mile per gallon fuel efficiency, the states you drove in and how many miles in each state, and how much fuel you bought in each state. If you buy diesel in PA, but drive through OH and IN with that fuel, you have to pay the tax per gallon for each of those states. If the tax in PA is higher (which it is) and the rate is lower in OH and IN (it is in OH) the tax you paid in PA is spread to those states and you are actually entitled to a small rebate, but the trip back you buy fuel in OH and burn most of it in PA. Since OH has a much lower tax rate, you have to pay at the end of the quarter so that PA gets the amount that they want for the amount your burned in that state.

That's the simplified version of it.

Since truck drivers have to pay so much for that fuel and can really do nothing about it, they charge a higher amount to deliver the goods. If they are delivering fuel, the price to deliver that gets higher as well. Every time that the trucking industry gets a new regulation that adds to their expenses, it gets passed on to you the consumer.

The second reason that I mentioned on high gas prices was consumer behavior. Not many people actually use less liquid fuels just because the price is higher. We have to have it, right? The truck drivers have to fuel up to get the product to the stores. Commuters have to get to work right? Well, since we'll pay for it no matter how much, we get charged that higher amount. If we reduced the amount that we "have" to use, the price would go down just like it would if the politicians wouldn't try to fill budget gaps with fuel tax increases.

This is a prime example of why we need to abandon oil and fossil fuels!

We should all be driving electric cars, charged by Solar (which works!), Hydroelectric (which works!), and Wind (which works!).

Even if just a majority of us switched, it would reduce the price dramatically.

Wind powered cars? Fail on those calm days.

Current electric cars use fossil fuel generated electricity and get less mpg than vehicles available in Europe. Current electric cars will NOT fully charge overnight on current household power, you need 220 to do that. Current electric cars are government subsidized at an amount greater than most of us make in a year.

While I agree that we need to really get into developing alternates to fossil fuels it cannot be done overnight. Right now regulations that hamper the efficiency of the internal combustion engine are in place that strangle the development of more efficient engines. Ford Focus Diesel European is rated at 80 mpg and in real world tests is getting about 60-65. The Prius in real world test gets about 35-40.

Right now, the government is mandating ethanol that according to three manufacturers will void your warranty if used. While ignoring the cost to the land of non-food grade farming. Ethanol is not an organically grown crop.

Right now, government is wasting tax payer money sitting on patents that would decrease the use of fossil fuels. The federal government is the number one holder of non-fossil fuel energy technology.

These things and many others can be changed, right now.