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THEY come in the wee hours of the morning, without ample warning, as
we’re in our homes fast asleep after a long week at work. We’re
not talking about thieves in the night, but they might as well be,
considering how much they take away from our hard-earned incomes.
Since the Downstream Oil Industry Deregulation
Act took effect more than a decade ago—and especially lately with
the record crude prices worldwide—retailers have been raising
prices at the pump when we are at our most vulnerable.
Their announcements—if we could call them
that—hardly reach the public to be of any practical use. If at
all, they would be aired during the late night TV news or barely 30
minutes before midnight, by which time most of us are already in bed
and too beat up from a week’s work and the Friday traffic to have
the energy to get up and drive to the nearest station to gas up.
For all the discomfort they’re causing
commuters during transport strikes, we must hand it to public
utility vehicle operators and drivers because they have the decency
to announce their plans way ahead of time. At least people could
plan their lives accordingly.
We can say the same about labor unions, which
are required by law to file the necessary papers with the government
before they embark on work stoppages. Not that we’re great fans of
these two groups, but the antiquated restraints imposed on these
factor markets betray the free-market ideologists’ bias for the
powerful when it comes to sectors such as the downstream oil
industry.
The underhandedness exhibited by oil companies
is so insensitive coming at this time when very expensive oil
products are causing inflation to shoot up again, raising fears that
incomes may be slow in catching up to the erosion in people’s
purchasing power.
What difference would it make for companies if
they announce their price increases early in the evening, giving
motorists enough time to pass by a station along the way home to gas
up? Apparently it means a whole lot for their margins, as they would
rather surprise most of us the following morning.
What we find so intriguing is that whereas
multinational oil refiners had reported record profits last year,
their local units and affiliates said their earnings barely rose
from the previous year. And we hear this at a time when oil products
are at their most expensive in history—and still rising, judging
from the unabated increases in the futures markets.
The sad part is that the downstream deregulation
law took away whatever legal remedies past edicts provided
consumers. The 1998 law even emasculated the government, which has
been reduced to a bean counter, tallying price changes after the
fact. The operative word, according to the law, is “price
monitoring.”
True, the law banned a handful of
anti-competitive offenses to prevent price collusion, but oil
companies have found a way around these practices. The law also gave
the Department of Energy certain powers it could exercise in such
circumstances, but left it to the local courts to deliberate on the
matter. As it is, the courts are already clogged up with other
pressing cases, so ordinary consumers are left to their own devices.
Once again, the free-market ideologists have betrayed the lot of
their unsuspecting middle-class supporters.
Despite the limitations set by law, we’re
still waiting for the incumbent energy secretary to make good on his
bluster when he took office. Last year, he had warned oil companies
to comply with a directive to inform the department of price
adjustments. Moreover, he announced a government plan to audit oil
companies, tapping the services of a third-party service provider.
We’re well into a new year, and we’ve yet to
hear anything come out of those initiatives. So, Mr. Secretary,
we’re still waiting.
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