A local man walked into the offices of the Osoyoos Times office this past Monday and demanded that our newspaper’s editorial staff “do something” about the high price of gasoline at local gas stations.
The man wanted to know why residents in Osoyoos are being forced to pay more than $1.20 per litre for regular gas, when consumers in other small towns in B.C. are paying far less.
While we sympathize with our visitor, the reality is gas companies never respond to media inquiries about gas prices in a timely, efficient or honest manner.
When the price of a barrel of oil first dropped to around the $40 Canadian level several months ago, you could see a lot of smiling faces across the country as gas prices dropped to as low as .80 cents a litre in many parts of the country and well below $1 a litre here in town back in January.
Several months later, the price of a barrel of oil is still hovering around the $40 mark, but gas prices have skyrocketed upwards once again and been stuck at around $1.20 per litre for the past several months.
At one point in early 2015, you could cross the line and get regular gas for a remarkable $2.10 an imperial gallon or $.52 cents a litre.
There is simply no rhyme, reason or excuse that gas prices have skyrocketed once again and remained this high when the price of a barrel of oil remains so low.
The major oil companies never have a valid explanation about gas prices and have chosen a policy of ignoring public frustration.
When they do go public, they come up with limp excuses about “transportation costs” or “problems with refineries” south of the border.
The next thing you know, we’re reading front page headlines about these same oil companies reporting quarterly profits of tens of billions of dollars.
It’s enough to make you scream.
It’s easy in the big cities like Vancouver to stage a personal protest by putting your car in the garage, refusing to fill the tank and take public transit. But the majority of people in small towns like Osoyoos are reliant on their vehicles to get around and they have no choice but to fill up their tanks and watch their bank accounts dwindle.
Oil barons from Saudi Arabia announced last year that they were going to continue to saturate world oil markets with “cheap oil” for many years to come. This was considered great news for consumers across Canada as it was believed it would lead to lower gas prices well into the foreseeable future.
That happened for a precious few weeks, but prices quickly returned to the $1.20 per litre range.
Just across the border, prices also jumped significantly this summer, but they have started to go down once again over the past couple of weeks.
As we enter the beginning of the fall, local vehicle owners continue to get gouged with some of the highest gas prices in the country for no apparent reason.
The bottom line is oil companies are greedy. End of story. Sad but true.
The only reason the major oil companies continue to reap unconscionable profits is because they are charging outrageous prices for a product they know the average Canadian can’t live without.
It would at least make some kind of sense if gas prices were high because the price of a barrel of oil was also high. But it makes no sense that prices remain ridiculously high when the price of a barrel of oil is at one of its lowest marks in the last decade.
Another reality is that until there are massive public protests and organized rallies by protestors willing to say “we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore”, nothing is likely to change.
