On the morning Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, I pulled into my local Stop and Rob and filled up the gas tank of my Grand Am at about $2.49 a gallon.

By the time I drove back by on the way home that evening, the price had risen to $3.39 a gallon. A line of cars rolled out the parking lot, down the street, around the corner, and for another half mile up Antioch Church Road.

My son had to leave the house at midnight, hoping to find a gas station still open, and with a reasonable wait, to fill his tank. He returned at four a.m.

Here’s the deal, though. The gasoline that was in that station’s tanks at eight in the morning was the same gasoline that was in it that evening. The station never received a shipment that day. No tankers pulled into the lot to fill the underground storage. For some unknown reason, though, the same gasoline that was worth $2.49 in the morning zoomed in value during the day, even though the Stop and Rob had paid the same wholesale price for it.

Now we know why.

Yesterday, British Petroleum reported a third quarter profit of 6.5 billion dollars, compared to 4.9 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Today, we expect to see Exxon Mobil admit to a nine billion dollar third quarter windfall – more money than they have ever made in any quarter, ever.

Well, sure. When you jack up the wholesale price of gasoline by – in some cases – over fifty percent, even though that same gasoline has been in storage for months, you’re bound to find a little extra cash in the till at the end of the day.

You see, the gasoline that you paid forty dollars a tank for in September had been pumped, refined, and stored at the low, low 2004 prices. It didn’t cost BP or Exxon a penny more to provide it to the dealers, but they hiked the prices at the very first sign of Gulf damage, just because they could.

And what are they doing with their windfall? Are they plowing it back to the consumer in the form of price drops? Why, no, Virginia. They’re spending it on… advertising.

That’s right. Bush’s oil baron buddies are spending millions on print and television advertising designed to convince you that they really aren’t gouging Grinches. We are Big Oil, little girl, and WE ARE YOUR FRIEND.

Baloney.

According to one advertising claim, “We’re all in this together”. Okay, I’m in. Pass me a couple million of OUR money.

What? You don’t want to share? I thought we were all in this together. My mistake.

The interesting thing is the sheer volume of advertising going on. Exxon Mobil has taken out nineteen full-page advertisements in major papers attempting to make themselves not look like thieves, compared with only twelve in 2004. Chevron’s done eleven more appearances in 2005 compared with 2004. The big winner is BP – British Petroleum. Good ol’ Green has has plastered the Washington Post with SEVEN full page ads since January. In 2004? Zip, zero, nada, none – nanka, as David Spade says.

Red Cavaney, President and Shill-In-Chief at the American Petroleum Institute, has even tried to divert attention away from gargantuan profits by pointing out how ecologically sensitive Big Oil has been throughout this crisis. After all, even though their primary backers made obscene windfall profits on the backs of the American consumers, they are careful to remind us that in the course of Mother Nature’s fury, there were no oil spills on the Gulf Coast.

Groovy. Reading between the lines, I’m interpreting that as meaning we didn’t lose any oil, SO THERE SHOULDN’T BE ANY SHORTAGE. Right, Red? Hmmm. No response. Guess not.

Other screeds urge consumers to back off on usage, while the Directors of Exxon Mobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and others ride gas hog limos and jet around the world all alone in their private planes. Even Big Oil Apologist George W. Bush took time from jetting back and forth to his bunker… er, ranch in Crawford to tell Americans that it’s time to bite the leather and take it up the chute, and that it’s likely to be a long cold winter for folks in the Northeast who depend on fuel oil to stay alive.

In all, the major oil companies expect to reap a windfall profit of between seven and ten billion dollars more than in the same period one year ago – at the same time claiming that they had to raise wholesale prices following Katrina because they were going to take it in the pants over infrastructure damages.

Red Cavaney, of course, says “Oh,Poo."

Okay, what he actually said was, “Yes, our numbers are large, but when you figure the size of the companies, we are at an all-industry average. We are half the size of the returns of the financials and pharmaceuticals."

Well. That helps. The oil barons are only making half as much as the biggest corporate criminals in the world, the pharmaceutical companies. I guess that only makes them half as evil, right? After all, how can you compare the simple mass rape of millions of American drivers dependent on gasoline to get to the work that drives the machine of American industry to the mass rape of millions of Americans dependent on life-saving medication to keep them alive so they can do the work that drives the machine of American industry?

Oops.

Okay, bad example.

Cavaney’s strategy is obvious, though. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” he seems to say. “It’s the Big Bad Wicked Witch of the West that you really need to fear.”

How do they get away with it? That’s easy. Their butt buddies Bush and Cheney run the country right now, much the way that Captain Hazelwood ran the Exxon Valdez. Both Bush and Cheney are up to their armpits in oil money. Big Oil spent eighty percent of its campaign contributions in the 2004 election on Republicans. Then, just to put on an appearance of impartiality, they threw a paltry twenty percent the way of specially selected Democrats from oil-dependent districts, and claimed they weren’t choosing sides.

So, when you’re shivering in the Cold Blue Northeast states this winter, you can rest assured that the Administration that Oil Bought is roasty-toasty in the West Wing of the White House, and that all is well in the Halls of the Exxon Mobil British Petroleum Royal Dutch Shell Hegemony.

Or is it an oligarchy? Hard to say.





Thanx and a tip of the ol’ chapeau to Frank Ahrens of the Washington Post for some of the key facts used in this blog entry.