It must be spring. The baseball season is under way, tulips are in bloom, and US Senator Chuck Schumer has called for another investigation into gasoline prices.
Schumer has a long history of holding a press conference and calling for one of two things: a release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to hold back prices, and investigations or monitoring of the price of gasoline. Last April it was a call to the Federal Trade Commission to make sure oil companies didn't use the end of the Mtbe mandate and the switch to ethanol as a reason to raise prices.
When he demands such an investigation, he is a little more sophisticated than some other politicians who regularly call for such studies. For example, on this go-round Schumer wants an investigation into whether refining companies scrimped on maintenance over the years, leading to this year's spate of refinery accidents and shutdowns. It isn't just a general "oil companies are evil" screed, and he isn't asking for more crude out of the SPR. Maybe he knows that Cushing is swimming in crude.
Schumer's website lists 96 separate press releases he has put out over the last few years on energy. Some of them are basically the same release, e.g., Schumer releases new survey of Capital region gas prices, followed by Schumer releases new survey of Dutchess County gas prices. A recurring them in press releases is criticism of FTC approval of such mergers as Exxon and Mobil and Chevron and Texaco. He has a press release from two years ago urging the FTC to block the Chevron-Unocal merger, a combination that grew Chevron's refining assets by a nice round number: zero. (And in fact, given that the merger ended the endless litigation and dispute over the so-called California gasoline patent, the combination may actually have saved consumers a few bucks).
One interesting aspect is that his numerous releases on the high cost of heating oil rarely degenerate into a brick-throwing exercise at oil companies, even though the producers of heating oil are the same ones that produce gasoline. What's the difference? The cynical might say that heating oil is not sold on the corner with its price out there for all to see, under the banner of a company whose name might have been mud for close to 100 years. Could that be the reason?
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