An Open Letter to The Oil Companies
Thanks for letting me ask some questions, and continue to wonder how you do things, and why you do what you do.
First, it is nice to see the price of a gallon of gas in Maine go in the other direction. Lower is so much better than higher.
Question number one. Why did the prices shoot up, over $5 so quickly, but now that the prices are going in the other direction, the movement is at a snail’s pace?
Some stats taken from Gas Buddy yesterday. $4.13 the lowest price in the area. A few more in that range. Lots more at $4.20 something, and the average price in the state was still at $4.43.
Yes, the trend continues to be lower prices, but again not very quickly.
Especially in Maine. $4.43 as an average price is higher than most states in America. The average for the country is $3.98 a gallon.
Nice to see us get below $4. a gallon, and hopefully Maine gets there sooner rather than later. And then keep going lower.
Hopefully, the trend continues until we are back to a price we are more used to paying. But again, why so slow?
They rose to over $5 quickly. And the reasons were speculated on by many. Supply and Demand. The Russia-Ukraine conflict. The supply chain issues.
Might the reason the prices are so slow to decline is that oil companies can 'get away with it?'
The system to put a price on a gallon of gas is complex on a simple day. Throw in the number of curve balls experienced in the past year and one could go crazy trying to figure out what is going on.
No suggestion that operators are gouging, just wondering why they are so slow to react to lowering prices most everywhere in America, but especially here in Maine.
Yes, profits in the oil industry are at an all-time high, and it must be tough to project that those profits will lessen as the price reduces.
But hopefully, that is not much farther down the road.