<Looking Dark...

Whenever I read these pieces I see a pattern of conditioning the public for outrageous and usually unnecessary price hikes.

California is getting tapped because there is more to tap. In San Diego one pays the highest price for gas in the US. It for years fluctuated between 1.80 and 2.25 a gallon when elsewhere in the nation it was 1.50. Why the disparity? Well, San Diego is one of the petroleum companies "precious plums" - select markets they gouge horribly throughout the year so as to make the ledger look really, really good at the end of the year.

It was no wonder that the oil companies broke into the top three of the fortune 500. This gouging practive has been going on for the past ten years or so. A practice that continues unabated.

Electricity providers learned from the brazenness of the gas companies - and now regularly gouge the whole California energy market.

It is this sort of thing (blackouts) which is not only preposterous in the 21st century - but insulting.

They know exactly what they are doing. By slowing output in California they can roll the would-be-new-plant dollars into investments (and salaries) while buying cheap power from Arizona for the summer and then quadrupling it's cost to the consumers in California.

The power companies can whine about shortage - "engineer" a few blackouts - let em sweat it out and get the CA consumer willing to pay anything to keep the power on.

Typical,

SDAI-Tech1