What other papers are saying
By Staff
Spending money to lose money
Gas prices are on the rise in Atmore (Ala.), and there's not a thing that can be done about it until this country realizes it is feeding the beast that is killing it.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) holds a high enough percentage of the world's oil and a large enough number of the world's refineries that it can pretty much set any price on oil it wishes knowing that the fuel-hungry American public.will pick up the tab.
In fact, according to the Central over eight million barrels of oil a day but is consuming 19.6 million barrels of oil a day. That means nearly 60 percent of our oil comes from other countries.
Last year people all over the state were enraged upon hearing that gas could reach as high as $2 over the summer in Alabama. It did, and we paid it.
This year we are being told that gas could be raised to as much as $3 by the end of the summer. And like children with money burning a hole in our pockets we will shell out our hard-earned cash so we can go to work.
If gas prices rise to $3 a gallon, the average tank of gas will cost $54. The average American burns a tank of fuel a week.
That's $2,808 dollars a year spent on gas in a country where the average income is $37,800 according to the CIA World Factbook.
To top that off over 27 percent of the OPEC nations are currently on our Axis of Evil checklist. One, Venezuala, has been on our terrorist watch list since World War II but they are not currently considered an Axis of Evil threat.
It seems more than a little ironic that the planes that turned much of Iraq into rubble were fueled largely by Middle Eastern fuel.
The OPEC nations seem to be raising gas prices primarily to hurt the U.S. economy. So the big question is why the government insists on importing fuel from these nations.
Atmore will not be hit as hard by this fuel crisis as other cities in other states but it will be hit pretty hard.
Unless the federal government wises up this whole nation will suffer as well.
