Letter: Better fill up before gas prices rise again

The A-D recent wrote: “Y-S gas prices drop $1.13 in a month on plummeting oil.”  My first reaction was.... I wonder why? Why did they (whomever the ‘they’ are) drop the price of crude oil? Why do we view news with skepticism and distrust? Is it because we are raised like mushrooms, i.e. “kept in the dark and fed horse manure?” However, my skepticism made me hasten to SAM’s and top off the gas tank. Who knows when the “they” will jack up the prices again.

We have a free trade economy - based on “supply and demand.” My skepticism says it was not ‘’demand’ that drove the price of crude oil up to $147/bbl. And, conversely it was not “supply” that plummeted the price down to $46. Why? Because it’s implausible that the crude at the oil fields be pumped into tanker ships, pass through straits/canals and several oceans to the refineries, refined from crude to gasoline, transported to the regional storage tanks, transported by tanker trucks to our local gas stations - and burned in our gas-guzzlers. In one month.... no way!!!  That’s why common sense says the market is manipulated.

My amateur political pundit, “Bagley the golfer” (we solve most of the global problems to/fro the golf course) came up with an astute observation. Because the Detroit carmakers are nearing bankruptcy, “they” manipulated (drop of) gas prices in order to sell their gas-guzzlers. We also decided it was to keep Congress from passing bills for alternative energy. So, what say you?

Fred Kawashima

Yuba City