Everyone seems to feel that the President has control over gas prices. If Obama would just sign that Keystone bill everything would be fine and the price of gas would drop. Sorry doesn't work that way. Found an interesting article on the web this week talking about the real reason that gas prices fluctuate.
"According to Commodities Futures Trading Commissioner Bart Chilton, “A Goldman Sachs study last year stated that each million barrels of net speculative length in the markets adds as much as eight to 10 cents to the price of a barrel of crude oil.” There’s a 22 percent cut paid to Wall Street speculators before gasoline is refined, he claims, adding that a typical Ford-F150 fill-up will include $14.56 paid to speculators. Yikes! Neither party has a stellar record of curtailing Wall Street excess, but the Economic Populist reports that oil speculation by politically connected hedge funds — including one led by a major donor to “Karl Rove’s network of attack groups” — were a factor in the 2008 oil price spike. The news will, I’m sure, lead all Republican candidates to disavow campaign contributions from such sources."
As we all know Congressmen and Senators are the worst insider traders so it would be no shock to me if a lot were getting rich over speculation that keeps the price at the pump abnormally high and they are not going to do anything about it.