Over the past four months, Big Oil has rushed to raise gasoline prices — sometimes charging far more at the pump than the increased cost of oil would warrant— a nd dawdled to lower them when crude's valuation declined, according to a new analysis released Monday by the progressive watchdog group Accountable.US.
Accountable.US acknowledges that the cost of oil plays an important role in determining the price of retail gas. But to understand why prices at the pump have outpaced the escalating cost of crude and why, when the cost of crude has fallen temporarily during the last 12 weeks, savings have very slowly — and only partially — been passed on to consumers, the group says to look no further than fossil fuel corporations' desire to maximize profit margins.
