Dread-Head's Blog

Dear Sirs:

                 I'm operating under the assumption that most of you are male given how many of the OPEC nations you deal with might not feel comfortable making billion dollar deals with women, but that's another topic for another day. My name is unimportant but I like most of the free world am one of your customers. I'm a working stiff in Houston, Texas who lives a quiet average life.

               I go to work, I go home and I occasionally hop into my car and go no particular place simply for the joy of going there.  For the past several years the price of oil has jumped steadily and seemingly everything makes them go higher. If there is a storm and a single refinery is off line for a week the price of oil rises. If one country in the middle east shoots at another or thinks about it, the price of oil goes up. If The Imir of Kuwait has a chest cold the price of oil goes up. When winter comes you raise the price of oil. When summer comes, you raise the price of oil.  If  we decided to explore ALTERNATIVES to crude oil the price of oil goes up. You're like a casino and the deck is so heavily stacked in your favor that it can't honestly be called a "game" anymore.

         Even though last year China only used 2% of the total oil that the United States used you've told me and your other loyal customers that them wanting 2% of the total oil used by the United States justifies you jacking up the price 25% and more.  You've told us that oil prices are set by supply and demand, yet as I check Reuters Business news or watch the "Nightly Business Report" on PBS I've yet to hear of petro-chemical price wars. I'm not hearing how Dubai is selling oil for less than Saudi Arabia, How Russia is trying to undercut Venezuela or how The United Arab Emmirates and Iran are having a clearance sale and "THEIR PRICES ARE INSANE!" Supply & Demand are part of a market economy but you guys aren't INTO supply and demand. You control the supply and all work together to insure that you all get richer without realizing you controlling the ENTIRE economy hurts everyone else.

  Average Americans like myself have to pay more for gasoline which leaves us with smaller food budgets. But because the grocers are ALSO paying higher fuel prices they pass them on to us and WE then get less food. As the cost of doing business is rising due largely in part to your raising the price of your product on a daily basis most employers can't give their employees cost of living raises to keep up with the rising cost of everything. You are preparing the world for a possible economic depression.

          Many small companies are going bankrupt because they can't afford fuel and many men and women are losing utilities because they are forced to pay higher prices for everything.  I'm writing you to say that I have had enough. This summer I shall only take my car when I've no other options. I'll take public transportation and ride a bike whenever I can. My car shall sit in my driveway only having it's engine started once a week to make sure the battery doesn't die.

      You and your wealthy Arab masters have successfully priced me off the road. I shall miss standing at gas stations filling my tank, driving to Austin and Louisiana to visit friends and family and just hopping in my car to drive across town for sushi or good Chinese food.  Gentlemen this economic war is over. You've won. As I don't speak for all Americans I can only hope you don't use myself and several other people not driving as yet another excuse to raise the price of oil yet again.

Economically Crippled,

                                           J Handy/Houston, Texas