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Show Life and other trivialities . . . Gas prices are back up By Steve Christensen E.p'est A.S ..O"' Ed'o. A wave of electricity went through the world a few months ago as gasoline prices took the first real price decrease in years, and that without doubt the largest decrease in history. But it was too good to be true. Just like the oil shortage of 1974 w as not real, but fabricated, the gasoline price decrease of 19.H3 w as not a real price decrease either. The oil shortage was conceived by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Counties (OPEC) to raise the price of oil. Pretty Pret-ty smart, it worked The gasoline price decrease was not in the same manner that the oil shortage shor-tage was, but it has the same results, it made people accept gasoline prices going high. If you haven't noticed, gas is back to the same price it was before the world oil glut occurred Granted. 5 cents of the price is additional tax, but give it time, they'll make up that f difference in the next couple of montlis or so. The whole premise the oil companies com-panies work on is that the memory of the American people is so bad We forget everything We forget atxiut how I'resicliiit LyixVn JoJuxo messed up in Vietnam. We forgot about how much we hated waiting in gas lines in llJ74 We forgot alxiut how the U S Congress voted themselves a raise when unemployment was skyrocketing. sky-rocketing. We also forget how the same pay raise w as rescinded as part of a bill that got vetoed by President Reagan. We forgot that the U.S. Congress Con-gress forgot the try' to rescind the pay raise again. We re-elected those same Congressmen who pulled this shenanigan on us. And we will forget that there was a world oil glut, and how easy it was to bring the price of oil down. We will also forget that it costs tw ice as much for gas to drive a big car as it does to drive a little car. Because of that we will buy big cars and use more gasoline and help make the rich oil companies even richer. It is interesting how much was written writ-ten for a short time about the world oil glut and possible breakup of OPEC. Everyone had a theory about what would happen Everyone was wrong. What happened was that all of a sudden sud-den nothing was being written about it anymore Saudi Arabia hushed up the renegade OPEC nations w ho actually had much more to do w ith the falling price of oil than any world oil glut. More countries are producing more oil right now than ever. and. even w ith our big ears, the United States consumption con-sumption has fallen from the peak years of the early lf70 s. These two factors, combined with the financial problems of countries like Iran, Nigeria, and Mexico, created the first open world oil market ever. These countries, as well as some more financially finan-cially solvent countries, like England, found oil on their hands thai they could not sell In an attempt to keep up w ith their debts, they lowered the price of their product in hopes of selling It worked, and other countries, plus oil companies in the United States, were forced to lower their price t ' I ; . ! - -.O --T-l S M i ., ,r-Ti. - jy-' ' . - - r -r.- HEAVY EQUIPMENT works the cobble rock bottom of Ashley Cteek to hold the overflowing creek inside its bonks. The " r- ' mjin concor n is to save the Hihlme CinJ I divetsion which the cteek wont Jioun: Tuesday. r - j ' - ' 'C.' . - . , 4 . . . . . ..... , - 4k TMK'I i WOMI N traverse hi,;h w.iter on l'j(X) North early in the week Some In an attempt to get the ; renegades back in line, andt-;-having a world oil price s i ,rabia lowered the bench-ri-: of its crude for the first tune r v For a couple of week after tb j ed oil analysts around tit ; predicted w hat would hap;e said oil would fall to f:o a ti-: even less. This armchair predicted gasoline pnees:.:-even pnees:.:-even if the price of oil did ne ; up. The only problem is. I hi,; -able to figure out w hose ploy in I think about what has ac:L pened. I realize the world reprice re-price is no higher than hr:L was 20 cents lower than r. ; Therefore. OPEC and other i r ing countries cannot be at fa.-r particular price increase W: leaves only the oil ref:ner.es k be gaining something tt"he:a hit its low point about two-. refineries were making ver money, or so they say. Txjk prices must go up if theye: tinue tn business. Weil prscsr Perhaps my theory :s r Perhaps the oil companies the oil are not at fault. M; whole thing was not a ploy K pose for a moment it as 1-1. ever seen the mo le The Fxi. If it was. the American pevpl;-right pevpl;-right to know. Anytime gasol.T jump li cents within a c: months people have Lbe r.gh:'.c But we ne er will, and we .l it happened, just like all LV. things we have forgotten. residents are now taking a ihanav ,n'1 IVKinmn to cl(iti up |