Text 17497, 74 rader
Skriven 2011-04-27 15:11:08 av Roy Witt (1:387/22)
  Kommentar till text 17468 av Björn Felten (2:203/2)
Ärende: Oil prices and multinational cartels
============================================
27 Apr 11 08:18, Björn Felten wrote to Roy Witt:


 RW>> goes up on speculation. And sometimes the filling station owner
 RW>> raises the price, just because he can in spite of what the oil
 RW>> company tells him the sales price is.

 BF>    Previously the filling stations here in Sweden had manual signs
 BF> saying what the price was. It took some labour to climb up a ladder
 BF> changing those signs. Nowadays every station has a light display that
 BF> can be remotely changed. And they do, oh boy do they do.

We have those too, but not every station does. Most of them still employ
the 'number on a stick' method to change prices.

 BF>    Yesterday I filled up my 450SL in the morning at SEK 13,29/litre.
 BF> When I returned home two hours later the price was 14,48/litre on
 BF> that exact same station (and every other station I passed).

Yesterday while driving to my favorite low-priced gas station, I noticed
the prices at those stations I passed on the way. Today, I had to go
almost the same route to buy groceries. The price had increased over-night
by 6 cents.

 BF>    Surely it was the same gas in the station tanks, originally coming
 BF> from the same super tanker at the same cost.

Yeup.

 BF>    I almost get the feeling that those light signs are automatically
 BF> connected to the oil exchange, displaying the present spot price.

Odds are that they're connected to the oil company pricing office and they
change it from there.

 RW>> You can't legislate against the OPEC cartel, since it isn't a US
 RW>> entity.

 BF>    True, sadly true. The UN might have been able to do anything --
 BF> but they are just an expensive, toothless debate-club IMHO.

Yes sir...nothing grand about the UN.

 BF>    If WTO spent more time representing the citizens and less the
 BF> corporations, they could have done something. But they spent all
 BF> their time and efforts on the so called "intellectual property"
 BF> nowadays.

Occasionally I get a newsletter from those people. They do seem to have
their priorities on the wrong thing these days.

 RW>> You can't do much against Haliburton because it has competition from
 RW>> other oil companies and setting prices as you suggest is illegal
 RW>> here.

 BF>    Yes, that's part of the democratic idea -- governments or law
 BF> writers should never try to influence prices.

 BF>    And since most countries are unable to prevent cartels -- other
 BF> than on a micro scale; the big multinational guys always get away
 BF> with it -- there's little hope for us who pay the bill in the end.

Mexico is fighting a drug cartel war at the moment and they seem to be
outnumbered and out-gunned by the cartels. It doesn't help that our BATFE
allows firearms sold here to be shipped across the border to the cartels.
But most of the cartel's weapons come from other cartels in South America
and most are imported from China.

                R\%/itt

  Fox News was not used as a source for information in this message!

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