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So I was reading my usual sports related news today, which on Monday’s is Peter King’s excellent SI column MMQB. He does an section at the end called Aggravating/Enjoyable Travel Note of the Week. This week it said the following:

Rant of the Week: I paid $62 to fill my 18-gallon tank with gas on Thursday in New Jersey. With $4-a-gallon gas around the corner (I hear it’s already here for premium in California), I have only one question: Where’s the outrage? Why are our elected officials doing nothing — nothing that any of us can see — about it? I can afford gas, but how about the people who cannot? I can’t believe we just let things like this happen in our society.   

And that got me thinking. Why aren’t we more upset about this topic? I drive over an hour to work each way. When I first took my job gas was 1/2 the price it is now. Pardon my language, but What the Fuck? What has happened to the angry dissenters of this country that they just sit around mildly complaining. So, I did a couple of Google searches to see what other folks were saying.Here is the first: Just a simple Google search for Outrage+rising+gas+prices. I was shocked that most, if not all of the entries in the first 4 pages were more than a year old. Many going back to 2004 and earlier. Not one from 2008 in the first 4 pages of results. I did manage to find this good piece from Bloomberg buried in the search results. Seems like the price of gas is not quite in the $4 range. Yet. The article finished with these prices:

The highest average price for self-serve regular gasoline was $3.66 a gallon in San Francisco, Lundberg said. The lowest was in Newark, at $3.03 a gallon. On New York’s Long Island, the price was $3.37 a gallon.   

So, Gas is currently over $3 everywhere in the country. Here is a look at the issue by CNN where they look into inflation and gas prices. Culminating in this great quote:

For each penny increase in the cost of gas, U.S. consumers pay an extra billion dollars a year, said Dean Baker, assistant director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. So to go to $3.22 a gallon from $1.74 a gallon in March 2004 is costing an extra $148 billion dollars this year alone.   

Let’s look at where that money goes. Rising Gas at blogstream has a great summary of this CNN article that tracks exactly where those dollars are going. And, just in case you were kind enough to stay on this page I will summarize(all numbers are per gallon):

• The gas stations: 7 to 10 cents
• Taxes: About 40 cents
• Transportation costs: 23 to 26 cents
• Refining: About 24 cents

OK. At best that’s only about $1. Gas cost over $3. So where does the rest go? Well I’ll go back to CNN for that:

Crude oil: This is the most expensive part of a gallon of gas. Of every gallon of gas $2.07 from every gallon of gas goes to producers of crude like Chevron, BP, and smaller outfits like Anadarko and Marathon, or national oil companies controlled by countries like Saudi Arabia, Mexico or Venezuela.   

Want more info about the companies that find and process the crude?  Check out this great link, where you can get much more info. I, on the other hand, will agree with FeelingBetrayed at the aforementioned rising gas that:

Sure, crude oil producers still have to pay costs to find oil, transportation, taxes, salaries, etc.; however, with all of these expenses, they are still making record profits! The $40 billion that Exxon profited in 2007 is nothing to laugh about!   

 So, where is the outrage people. Why aren’t we doing anything about it? Do we not care? Do people even notice? Are they unaware of the massive profits made off just a minor increase in gas prices? Are these Crude Oil producers so in control of our government that we won’t be able to see any significant reduction in gas prices now that they see the types of profits they make? You tell me. Post your comments below.