Hinchey: Oil Companies Need to Stop Gouging Customers at the Pump

Kingston, NY - Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) on September 1, 2005,  released the following statement on rising gas prices and what steps the federal government should take to help customers.  

 "While gas prices have steadily climbed for the past several years, the last few days have brought incredible price surges. What this country faces is largely not a problem with a shortage of oil to the extent that the hurricane is involved.  It is a problem with a shortage of the refined product.  Releasing the raw material from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is too little, too late. This is something the president should have done long before the hurricane, when gas prices were already rising.  

  "The fact of the matter is that the oil companies have been exploiting this situation to make extraordinary profits.  The oil companies today are literally awash in cash. They have so much cash they don't know what to do with it. In fact, many of them now are buying up their own stock and thereby driving up the value of that stock. Oil company executives are getting richer at the expense of average Americans.

  "People are seeing the price of gas rise by the hour despite the fact that the gas in tanks at gas stations is the same gas that was in those tanks last night and the night before. The oil companies paid a certain price for it and that price for the gas already delivered to stations should not now change because of the hurricane.  Oil companies are taking advantage of the hurricane and pretending that that's what is driving up prices just as the president is pretending that releasing anything out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is going to have an effect on gasoline today.  It's not. It won't have any effect whatsoever. What the president is doing is what he does so often -- he's dancing around the problem rather than doing anything real about it.

      "We need to do other things. We must have a complete investigation by the Federal Trade Commission to uncover the practice of price gouging by oil companies. This price gouging is a result of anti-trust practices that are occurring within the oil industry. We need to get to the bottom of these anti-trust practices and stop the oil companies from bleeding the American people to death with the price of gasoline. Also, very shortly, I'm going to be introducing legislation to establish an excess profits tax on the gasoline companies because they are definitely making extraordinary profits -- in excess of what would be reasonable under any circumstances. They are raising gas prices recklessly and without any control whatsoever. The president should also immediately setup a special commission to monitor the effect of gas prices on national security. The inflated price of gasoline is having a detrimental effect on national security. We need a close analysis of exactly what that effect is so we can take the appropriate steps to address it."