The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

The Gas Is Natural—The Price Is Not!

Mar 7, 2005

This winter, monthly home heating bills jumped way up. Consumers were told that it couldn’t be helped, because the price of oil was jumping up, too.

But what does one have to do with the other?

It’s true that natural gas is often found in the same area as oil. It’s also true that the biggest gasoline companies are the biggest natural gas companies. But the story ends there. The systems are completely separate and independent. Natural gas comes from different wells, is piped by different pipes, shipped by different ships, processed in different ways and stored and distributed through different facilities.

But it is priced by the same companies, who learned from Enron that any lie told in fleecing the consumer is perfectly OK!