Time For A Real Investigation Into The Price Of Gas

By Ben Meisner

You may notice that our Columnist Peter Ewart has written about the price of gas as well, I haven’t read his column on purpose so that I might make some comments about what most Canadians consider to be the biggest rip off in the history of our country with no one prepared to step forward and tackle the issue.

How can you say that the storm in the southern USA has resulted in residents of Prince George finding ourselves short of gasoline when one; the pipe line comes right into the city and two; the refinery that we get most of our fuel from is operating just as it was before the price of crude dropped from $150 a barrel to right around $100.

That should have resulted in the price of fuel dropping about 40 to 50% but it didn’t.  Why?  Well the argument you get from the gas companies is that the storms in the southern USA have resulted in the price increases.

Well that might be an argument in the Southern USA but we export into the US about 25% of their requirements for fuel and unless I have been asleep at the switch there hasn’t been a shortage here.  Of course keeping in mind the Petro Can folks who had a refinery go down and used that as a lame excuse as to why they had to shut down some of their stations. I guess they have never heard about buying some of the product that they needed from say Husky in Prince George whose refinery was operating up to par thank you very much.

So let’s do away with the excuses for once and for all and say it like it should be said, we are being gouged big time and its time that governmen,t namely the federal government, steps in and drops the hammer.  Now the fesds are saying that the last time they had an inquiry they found out that there was no price fixing. Let’s see, when the price goes to exactly $147.9 at all of our stations no matter who owns them that's just a coincidence? No price fixing there, they are just physic.

Now I’d like to add the matter of why the price went up on the long weekend just passed when the price of crude in the world was dropping. The argument we got the last time was, well the storage is full of $140 dollars a barrel oil. No fooling, then it must hold true that now that theye are full of $100 crude it should be priced at about a buck a liter. But it isn’t why, you ask? nothing more than gouging of the public.

This should be an election issue and instead of resting on the hind ends it’s about time some of these political heavy weights started representing the Canadian people.

I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.

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