Because we had been fattened up for months by the oil cartel propaganda machine to accept that gasoline would be three bucks or more per gallon come Labor Day, the size of this week’s killer price hikes may have come as a shock, but their arrival right on schedule came

as no great surprise.

The surprise was that the perfect excuse for Big Oil to stick it to us would be provided

by Mother Nature when she tragically unleashed the perfect storm on the southland’s refinery belt.

The manipulative cartels hold the trump card in this one, because in the face of the unbelievable suffering, misery and despair of untold thousands of Americans in the Gulf Coast states devastated by Hurricane Katrina, consumer complaints about the high cost of gasoline ring hollow and petty, at best.

We don’t have to watch the television coverage coming out of New Orleans or Biloxi or Slidell for more than five minutes to know that we are truly blessed to live here instead of there. The exorbitant price of gasoline and heating oil measures pretty low on the scale of hardship when stacked against a national disaster of such magnitude.

To complain about gasoline prices in the face of such catastrophic adversity marks a grouser as self-absorbed and insensitive, even though he more likely than not may have just made a generous donation to a relief fund to help disaster victims.

Still, nothing rivets our attention quite like that which loots the wallet, as any politician can attest. If the high price of gasoline and home heating oil didn’t edge out even Hurricane Katrina’s death and destruction as Topic A in most conversations that took place in your wanderings this week, you may want to consider finding new company to keep.

Broach the subject when you are out and about these days, and one thing seems clear: Even Sherlock Holmes at the top of his game would be hard-pressed to solve the gasoline and heating oil pricing system to which this nation of gas guzzlers is subjected.

It may be elementary, my dear Watson, as to why the prices for both commodities are all over the board with seemingly no rhyme nor reason as to location, trucking costs, distance from a supply source, and the like. But if you can satisfactorily explain it to me – preferably without the obligatory condescending Economics For Dummies lecture about supply and demand – I shall be forever indebted to you. Really.

In a Page One story in the Thursday morning newspaper concerning this week’s massive storm surges in the cost of gasoline, Bruce MacDonald, manager of the B-Gas Mobil

station on State Street in Bangor alluded to a part of the pricing structure that has long mystified Joe and Joleen Sixpack.

The paragraph that virtually jumped off the page for readers who tend to believe that there may occasionally be something fishy afoot in the gasoline-pricing business was this one: “MacDonald said that on Wednesday morning he could afford to charge as much as 23 cents less per gallon than the nearest competitor because he was still selling gas he bought last week.”

Because he was still selling gas he bought last week.

If I had a buck for every time this point has come up in conversation about gasoline prices at the pump I’d be able to fill my gas tank with four-dollar gas and still have money to make a modest down payment on half a tank of heating oil.

Warranted or not, the common suspicion among the crowd I run with is that a whole lot of gasoline “bought last week” is being sold at the higher price du jour. Presumably, that is one of the aspects of the gas-pricing system that Maine Senate President Beth Edmonds wants explored in her recent call for an investigation.

Gov. Baldacci has promised vigilance in guarding against profiteering,

collusion and the like.

Meanwhile, most gas station managers have retained their sense of humor in these trying times. I saw one on television this week saying that he was determined to keep his low-octane stuff below $3 a gallon. The sign behind him pegged the price at $2.99.9.

When I have the opportunity, I plan to go buy a gallon of the man’s gasoline because I want to add to my collection of rare coins the coveted tenth-of-a-cent coin that he apparently stands ready to give me in change when I hand him three dollars.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is

olddawg@bangordailynews.net.