BLOBBY'S BLOG

THE PRICE OF...

I don't know gas prices elsewhere in the country or even township to village. Cleveland seems odd in how the price of gas is determined. First, Cleveland is split into the East side and West side (no Jets. no Sharks. ...that I know of.) One would think that when the streets turn from, say E. 3rd Ave to W. 3rd, somewhere inbetween you've hit the West side. You'd be wrong. The west side actually means the west side of the Cuyahoga River....which is past W. 9th. Don't ask. And people are realllllllly weird about the whole "oh.....you're an East sider!" kind of thing.

One thing the west side has going for it is its gas prices - they are always lower. Not by a penny or two, but usually by a dime. Sometimes more. The east side isn't less accessible for tanker trucks to deliver their goods. Refineries aren't either. We're even closer to the MidEast! What gives?

Anyhooo...I filled up last Saturday at what many would consider a ridiculously low rate of $2.05 a gallon. I understand supply/demand economics. I know that summer is over and vacationers are not demanding tanks full at this time. I get that the hurricane season wasn't the disaster they claimed it would be. I know that some gas company found what is possibly one of the richest veins of crude in the Gulf of Mexico a few weeks back. And I know that prices are supposedly based on 'futures'.

And here is the new future: mid-term elections. What else can it be? Maybe Shurb's low low low polling numbers when it comes to energy!

It's hard not to be a bit skeptical about Shrub and his boys (hey, he's gotta keep them happy w/high energy costs). Conflict in the mid-east isn't any better than it has been in two years. The vein of crude they found in the Gulf is a minimum of five years before they produce a drop. So are we saying that lack of hurricanes and decreased travelers let gas prices drop by almost a dollar in a month? PLEASE.

The government and the oil companies have gotten us to a point where when we're just above $2 a gallon, we exhale and think 'wow! that's low!!'. And to the rest of the world it's dirt cheap. To the U.S. it is not. They have succeeded in inflating prices over the last 2-3 years so that when prices fell, they are still statistically much higher than they were before then, the gas buying public's expectations have been shifted.

Well played Mr. Bush.