US to watch for gas price-gouging: Bush

A gas station pump in Bayside, New York, April 17, 2006. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

I think today is a good day to play "Political Double-Speak." This is also from Yahoo News:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said on Tuesday he is "concerned" about high gasoline prices, and pledged that the U.S. government will keep a close watch out for profiteering.

"I'm concerned about higher gasoline prices," Bush said at a Rose Garden news conference to name new staff appointments.

"The government has the responsibility to make sure that we watch very carefully and investigate possible price-gouging, and we will do just that," Bush said in unprompted remarks about energy prices.

U.S. crude oil futures hit a record of $70.88 a barrel on Tuesday on fears of supply disruptions in Iran stemming from its nuclear standoff with the West, as well as lingering outages in Nigeria.

U.S. retail gasoline prices rose 10 cents last week to average $2.78 a gallon, up 29 cents over the last three weeks and 55 cents higher than a year ago, the government said on Monday.

Bush said high crude oil prices, rising summer driving demand and a switch to new motor gasoline standards is keeping gasoline prices high.

"It's tight supply worldwide and we've got increasing demand from countries like India and China, which means that any disruption of supply ... (is) going to cause the price of crude to go up," Bush said.

I love the political double-speak here with President Bush. First, he says he's concerned about the higher gas prices, and says that government has the responsibility to investigate claims of price-gouging. And President Bush will do just that, as U.S. gas prices rose 10 cents last week. Over the past two weeks here in San Jose California, I've seen gas prices rise up around 20 cents to $3.00 a gallon for the regular unleaded--the super premium stuff is up to around $3.22 a gallon.

And while our president is concerned about the possibilities of oil companies price-gouging American consumers, President Bush then tells us that there is a tight supply of oil, with increasing demand and any disruption of the supply would cause oil prices--and gas prices--to go up. Mr. President, specifically what type of "disruption" of the supply of oil are you referring to--say an attack on Iran? And since a "disruption of the supply" of oil would cause oil prices to increase, then the oil companies are certainly going to charge higher gas prices on the American consumer to offset the increase oil prices--gee, there is no price-gouging by the oil companies here. But the president will be on the look-out for those evil price-gougers.

You just have to love the political double-speak here.