Bart Stupak: “I rise to commend the new Democratic Congress which will finally address high energy prices. Many Americans have a hard…”

“I rise to commend the new Democratic Congress which will finally address high energy prices. Many Americans have a hard time understanding what often seems like arbitrary reasons for fluctuations in gas prices. As the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, I look forward to bringing transparency to the oil and gas markets to clarify their effect on gas prices. A recent example of confusing market behavior was in September and October of 2006, just before the November elections. Gas prices dropped an average of 60 cents per gallon. This 60-cent drop in gas prices occurred despite the fact that there were pipeline disruptions in Alaska and indications that OPEC would cut oil production. While gas prices dropped 60 cents a gallon in September and October, crude prices only dropped 10 cents. For years, the American Petroleum Institute, API, the oil companies' main lobbying group, spent millions of dollars on public relations campaigns convincing the American people that big oil companies are victims of international crude oil prices and have little to say in the final price of gasoline. API insists a price of a gallon of gas is directly related to the price of a barrel of crude oil. Yet before the election we have a 60-cent per gallon drop in gas prices and only a 10 percent drop in the price of crude.”