Are gasoline prices “too high”• Maybe they aren’t high enough. Are we crazy• Yes, for the truth of the matter: -…A fella in Arizona is trying to build a piddling 150,000-barrel-per-day oil refinery in the desert, and he’s still jumping through regulatory hoops. There hasn’t been a refinery built in the United States since 1976, but he’s pretty much alone. – We import – import – refined product, buying the value added to crude oil from foreign sources instead of paying Americans to do the job. Lack of refining capacity is a supply bottleneck and contributor to the rise in prices. -…The price run-up goaded the Senate into finally voting for developing an oil field in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But what of nuclear power, coal, “alternative” sources of energy and more oil production• What of personal conservation• The price of refined petroleum products still hasn’t broken the inertia. -Why isn’t there a crescendo of voices calling for reduction or elimination of federal and state gasoline taxes at the pump• In Pennsylvania, the combination is 44 cents a gallon. – Americans are still buying lots of gasoline at these “inflated” prices. Consumption is forecast to increase 39 percent by 2025. The commodity markets are betting that gasoline demand will rise in the United States this summer even though the cost is “outrageous.” No, prices aren’t “high enough.” Not yet.

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