The lead story in today’s Evening News was about gas prices going up again.

As we discussed the day’s news in this morning’s Page 1 planning meeting, that story quickly jumped to the top. Everyone is affected by rising gas prices, and everyone is angry about it.

I can remember few stories, in my years as a journalist, where readers mistrust the information as much. No one I know really believes what they hear from oil companies.

Now, that doesn’t mean the oil companies aren’t telling the truth. It’s just that skepticism on this subject is out the roof. We’ve all heard too many conflicting stories over the years, while we watched oil company profits soar.

Frankly, it’s my view that gas prices will go as high as Americans will pay. It doesn’t have anything to do with the price of crude or lack of oil refineries or rising demand. It’s all about charging as much as folks will pay. If drivers begin conserving, the price will come down. As long as we keep paying, the price will go up.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 3:39 pm and is filed under State and national issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.