Word: opec
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...John Dingell scolded the White House for letting Big Oil get away with price gouging on the way to the pump and called on Bush to follow his own campaign advice and say to OPEC, "open up your spigots." Other Democrats stumped for further short-term measures - repeal "gas tax" to ease price pressures at the pump, and wholesale price caps on electricity to force California's energy market back into a more consumer-friendly balance...
...Gasoline prices may not be so cooperative. And it remains to be seen if the White House will react to the political alarm bells. It seems that Bush and Cheney have correctly appraised the situation as market-based and, in the near term, pretty much unavoidable. OPEC isn't the problem this time; the current spike at the pumps, as well as any similar (or worse) summer pain, comes down to U.S. refineries - refinery fires, refinery maintenance, whether refineries can run at full capacity until October - not sympathy (or lack thereof) from Washington. As far as the Bush team...
...When OPEC turns the tap off, it takes a few weeks for American consumers to feel the effect at the pump. The lag time for retail prices depends primarily on gasoline inventories. But when there's a fire at an Illinois refinery, as there was on April 28, it takes only a few days for the price of gas to spike at pumps in Detroit. Combine a fire in one place with a new regulation in another and you've got a national price spike like the one that happened last year, when a Michigan pipeline burst in June...
...Schupp is looking on the bright side. With gas at the pump now topping $2 a gal. in his neighborhood and seemingly headed higher, he figures it's payback for all those insufferable, phony-rich, new-economy yuppies in their view-blocking, death-dealing, friend-of-OPEC SUVs. "Gas will probably go to $3, and I applaud it," says the retired computer-company executive as he fills the tank of his light pickup truck at a station in Los Angeles. "I'd like to see all gas guzzlers off the road...
...part of the problem has been the cost of crude, from which gasoline is refined. OPEC has cut production twice since President Bush took office--the first time in January, the second in March--by a total of 2.5 million bbl. a day. That has pushed up prices to about $28 per bbl., the high end of OPEC's target zone...