Last week Canada's Industry Minister Maxime Bernier was reported as saying that in every country in which governmental interference/control in the price of oil and gas has been tried, it has failed.

We've just spent two winters in Mexico, doing a great deal of driving. Since the nationalization of the oil industry in 1938, brought about by Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico has only one gas station, the Pemex, and the price of gas is uniform across the country, at every single Pemex. I think it might be approximately 6.7 pesos per litre there these days.

If it's 6.7 pesos per litre in Mexico right now, then that must mean it's 6.7 = 0.677274 Can. x 4.54 (litres per imperial gallon) = $3.07 Can. per imperial gallon. That's the price in Mexico these days. 6.7 = 0.622691 USD x 3.78 (litres per US gallon) = $2.35 USD per U.S. gallon in Mexico today. Compare that to what we are paying in Canada right now, $4.95 per gallon. At $1.09 Canadian per litre, times 4.54, it is app. $4.95 Canadian per imperial gallon.

I hear that folks in Portland Oregon paid $3.41 USD a gallon last week.1.00267 Amer. x 3.78 = 3.79 USD per US gallon. (Last week in Portland, Oregon, $3.41!)

Is it time to start a "1938 Mexican style" campaign to nationalize oil and gasoline? We could argue that like water, gas and oil are too important to be left in private enterprise's hands.

Private enterprise is a good thing, in fact, a sacred cow, but it only works where there's real competition, which there is not right now in the gasoline industry. We are told over and over again that there is a definite lack of refining capacity in both the U.S. and in Canada. The actual price of crude is supposedly down at present so it's the oil companies that are doing this to us.

The report publicized in the media a couple of weeks ago tells us the oil companies having been making from 15 to 27 per cent higher than their normal profit margins ever since Katrina. I see that as gouging, which they can get away with because no government has the guts, or to be fairer to our governments, maybe no weapon strong enough to take them on. There is no stick to frighten the oil companies.

A discussion of nationalization would provide that stick. I'd bet such a national discussion would cause profit margins to return to more normal levels. Maybe some more refineries would even get built with the profits the oil companies are making???

Is this musing worth passing on to anyone else on your e-mail list? Would that be enough to get a national discussion of nationalization started?

Richard Dominico

via e-mail