"I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less."
21 August 2006The Oracle of Premium UnleadedWere I the nation's Energy Czar, the first thing I would do, of course, would be to abolish the position of Energy Czar. The second thing I would do is to suggest (since I no longer had any actual, you know, power) that everyone try to be nice to Trilby Lundberg. The AP has a feature story today on the "guru of gasoline prices," whose biweekly Lundberg Survey is the best-known of all the petroleum indices. She learned this stuff basically by OJT: she was trained as a classical pianist, and wound up with the job when her father, Dan Lundberg, who developed the survey half a century ago, died in 1986. And, she says, there's no Svengali manipulating the prices behind the scenes:
Are there five oil industry executives someplace deciding the price of gas? "That would be tragic because that would wreck the market," she said. "And it would be a comedy because it is impossible."
Lundberg said oil companies have no interest in helping each other; they want to increase their sales at the expense of the competition. "They all have no mercy," she said. Oh, and don't ask her about the gas mileage on her Mercedes. She has no idea. Posted at 9:32 AM to Family Joules |