On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Katy Tur Reports,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm stated that whether price gouging is increasing the price of gas is “absolutely worth looking at.” But “I’m not saying that everybody is gouging, but certainly, it deserves looking under the hood so to speak and the president has called for the FTC to do that.”
Host Katy Tur asked, “What about price gouging? The president said he’s going to focus on oil companies that are taking advantage of the situation. The other day, the CEO of one of the major oil companies said that they were seeing record profits. Do you see price gouging as part of the problem here?”
Granholm responded, “There is no doubt this should be looked at. I remember when I was attorney general, back in the day, after 9/11, there were all these gas stations that took advantage of people’s fear and gouged people. And so, I think that this should definitely be looked at. It is a curiosity now that we see actually the price per barrel is down to about $106 per barrel, but yet we’re seeing record gasoline prices. You should see a parallel drop. It may not happen that day. Because it takes a little bit of time for gasoline to be refined and then get to your local gas station, but this question about why there is such a disparity between the price of oil per barrel, and when it drops and the fact that gasoline does not drop, even a few days later, to the same amount that oil dropped. So, I think this is absolutely worth looking at. I’m not saying that everybody is gouging, but certainly, it deserves looking under the hood so to speak and the president has called for the FTC to do that.”
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