The Price Of Gas

Why is gas so expensive? The answer is simple. We, the consumers willingly pay it. Yes we complain about it, but we keep buying it. so why should the prices go down? When car sales are down, manufacturers lower prices and offer rebates to sell them. It's all about that old supply and demand thing. We demand gas and the industry supplies it at what ever prices they can suck out of us. Maybe we need to decrease the demand to get their attention.
It all starts with OPEC, they set market prices on crude oil. This has to be the ultimate case of price fixing! The oil companies don't fight them on it. They just raise prices to compensate for it to ensure their massive profits. The poor guy at the corner gas station has to sell everything he can in addition to gas to make a living.
How can the problem be fixed? I have several thoughts on that. For starters, the oil companies can tell OPEC the maximum price they are willing to pay for crude oil.They also can demand that prices be reduced over a period of time by the oil producers improving their efficiency in the extraction and transportation of oil. Naturally OPEC would be resistant to such a deal. So the oil companies might have to not buy OPEC oil and resort to domestic oil production and exploration as well as tapping into the National Defense Reserve for a while. However, without one of the major consumer nations buying their oil, OPEC will come around.
What's wrong with domestic oil? Did you know there is more oil in Alaska's north slope and Canada than there is in Saudi Arabia. The major hurdle is the fear that extracting it will harm the environment. I'm quite sure the oil companies could invest some of their massive profits to find ways to extract this oil safely with no harm to the environment. Once thats accomplished, OPEC would have major competition.
Until something gets done, we will keep digging deeper into our pockets