[Bill Douglas]

US companies pump a HUGE amount of oil from here in New Zealand. Our goverment gets something like 10% of it's worth and the oil companies and their infrastructes do the work. The reason it's not cheap is because the oil companies don't want it to be cheap. that's why they have made billions of dollars profit in an era of high prices for crude. They are costing it out as if it has cost them the world spot prices, and pass this cost onto the consumer, whereas it probably cost them 10 bucks a barrell.