Back in 2005 the present Chairman of BEC, when he was Minister of Trade & Industry, was all about town trying to convince taxpayers that getting into hock to the late Hugo Chavez, the dictator of Venezuela, through a scheme of getting gas on credit, was a great idea.

In August 2005 the average price of a gallon of gas was $3.80, while today it's $5.45. Yet the silence is deafening.

Today, the government's tax take on a gallon of gas is approximately $1.83. That's over 4 times more than the station owner's $0.44 and about 5 1/2 times more than the distributor's $0.33. And by the way, that's $0.65 more per gallon in these tough times than back in 2005 when the economy was quite buoyant. The tax take in 2005 was about $1.18 per gallon.

So in these tough times one would think the government would reduce their profit from the importation of gasoline?

Surely forcing the distributor to hold the line at a 7% mark up and the retailer to a 9.3% mark up, the government should reduce their 39% mark up?

And to think the oil companies are accused of gouging because they make a profit.

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N.B. See the calculations worked backward from the retail price in the photo on the left. Click on the image for a larger version. Please feel free to double check the numbers and should you find an error please let me know as I do not have detailed information from the oil companies and in case anything has changed.