Stop Whining

Something that perplexes me is people blaming the price of oil on the Big Oil CEOs and calling them thieves and liars. Let’s cut the mustard; it’s not the Oil Executives fault that you buy their product. Do you want to stop them from making so much money? Then stop buying gas. Many people don’t know this but Big Oil companies such as Exxon only make around 8 to 10 cents of profit per gallon of gasoline that’s sold. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) the average price of gasoline since 2006 has risen .94 cents. However, the profit per gallon of the Big Oil Companies hasn’t increased. Therefore the rising fuel costs aren’t the reason that Exxon reported record profits last year; the reason is the sheer amount of gasoline that you and I buy.

The EIA reports that consumption from 2006 to 2007 increased from 9,253 thousand bbls to 9,290 thousand bbls (a bbl stands for one billion barrels). Now, as a consumer, you can’t complain about the price of a product yet still buy increasing amounts of that product. Who in their right mind would lower the price of anything if more of it is being sold every year? This leads to the interesting conclusion that consumers control the price of gas, not the oil CEOs or your corner gas station. Now how many of you reading this has complained about high fuel costs? How many of you have done anything about it like, say, use less gas? This may sound drastic, but so does a $4 gallon of gas. I guess it all refines down to this question: do you want the price to go down or not? If you do, well, you have your solution. If not, at least heed the title.