Before the 1973 Arab oil embargo gasoline could be found for 30 cents per gallon, and the cost per barrel of crude domestic oil was about $7.00 per barrel. The Arab oil embargo caused prices to rise and we all know about the huge profits that were made by each and every oil company world wide.
Our almost-did-nothing Politicians at that time passed a windfall profit tax because oil company profits increased about 300%. Those oil people were still pumping $7.00 per barrel oil and they weren't about to reduce retail prices because O.P.E.C. fixed the price for their oil to, for starters, $16.00 per barrel. Then again, our oil people loved those Arabs and made many of them filthy rich many years before O.P.E.C. was created. Was that just a cleaver plot between them and our oil people? Yep! That's what it was.
The windfall profit tax was a big problem for our oil people because they were now paying hundreds of millions of dollars more to the IRS. Because of that, gas prices weren't going down to pre 1973 levels. Also, they would have to defeat the tax if they expected to maintain those huge profits year after year. Well, they just bought more Arab oil to increase their average per barrel cost and pay far less to the IRS.
What you don't know is that they also closed their $7.00 per barrel wells and used some of their huge profits in which to drill new wells to tap the same oil source that those old wells sucked from below the Earth. So now, the same oil suddenly cost $17.00 or more per barrel. The windfall profit tax became nothing more than joke that was repealed. What about fair competition and those other laws that prevent price gouging or extortion?
In times of a National Emergency, who cares? We People need gas in order to go to work and buy food. That's true enough, and those high gas prices were the start of 1,000% inflation. I wonder what will happen this time? Naturally, you can expect the same thing to happen.
During and after the crisis our oil people were doing their best to keep prices from going higher and they had one way to end shortages by simply trading millions of gallons of fuel between themselves.
X company would ship fuel to Y company to prevent a shortage in Illinois, and Y company would ship an equal amount to X company to cover a shortage in California. Is that fair competition when they all do business in all of the States? No.
It's entirely possible that the same oil source became the refined product within the tanks of every fuel station in an entire State. Is that in compliance with our anti-trust laws? No. Then again, that's what they call serving their customers.
Believe it or not, that's just one of the things that our multinational corporations did and continue to do as part of their desire to create a, "New World Order," and take for themselves the wealth of the entire Earth.
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