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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

High gas costs fueling anger everywhere

Paul Blustein and Craig Timberg Washington Post

WASHINGTON – Rising fuel prices are stoking popular anger around the world, throwing politicians on the defensive and forcing governments to resort to price freezes, tax cuts and other measures to soothe voter resentment.

The latest example came this weekend in Nigeria, where President Olusegun Obasanjo promised in a nationally televised Independence Day speech that the cost of gasoline would not increase further until the end of 2006, no matter what happened in global oil markets. He acted after furious demonstrations shut down whole sections of major cities around the country over the past several weeks.

Antagonism over the strains inflicted by escalating energy costs is a phenomenon that stretches from rich nations in Western Europe, where filling up a minivan costs upward of $100, to poor countries in Asia and Africa, where rising oil prices have driven up the cost of bus rides and kerosene used for cooking.

Although prices vary widely around the globe, with many governments keeping fuel costs below market levels and others maintaining stiff taxes on petroleum products, the mood in many parts of the world can be summed up in the lamentations of Julia Seitsang, a mother of 10 who lives in Windhoek, the capital of the southern African country of Namibia.

“Gas prices are biting us so hard it stings,” said Seitsang, a 46-year-old businesswoman, opening her wallet to show just a few Namibian coins as she stood on a busy street looking for someone to share a taxi. “I have to spend more and more for my husband to drive my children to school every day.”

Adding that her children, who go to three different schools according to their grades and talents, might have to be moved to one school because of the family’s gasoline bill, she said, “I swear we are living in the hands of Jesus with these gas prices.”

The impact is particularly hard on people in nations like Namibia, where the average annual income is $5,000 and gas costs about $5 a gallon. They have watched helplessly as the prices of crude oil and petroleum products, which are set in global markets, have soared over the past two years, first because of the powerful demand generated in large part by China’s rapidly growing economy and more recently because of the gasoline shortages generated by Hurricane Katrina. But in many wealthy countries as well, discontent among ordinary citizens is compelling politicians to respond.

In the European Union, there was a brief attempt by the 25 member governments to maintain a united front against consumer demands for tax cuts, rebates and other subsidies to offset rising fuel prices. Many of those governments depend on taxes that add as much as $5 to a gallon of gas.

But the unity cracked last month as Poland and Hungary approved fuel tax cuts and Belgium promised a rebate on home heating fuel taxes. In France, where a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline fetches up to $6.81 in Paris, thousands of farmers and truck drivers staged brief street demonstrations two weeks ago, and the government offered them a $36 million package of gas tax breaks and rebates.

In Canada, too, the government, facing an election next year, is scrambling to put together a package to present to the cabinet this week, including a new agency to monitor gas prices, help for low-income Canadians with their home heating bills, and new powers to investigate price-fixing complaints.

Canadians paid about $4.07 per gallon for gasoline shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit, reflecting the surge in petroleum prices for an industry closely tied to the giant U.S. market and taxes that are generally double those in the United States. Although the pump price subsided to an average of $3.50 a gallon last week, “there is a great deal of consumer frustration and outrage,” said Cathy Hay, a senior associate at M.J. Ervin & Associates, an independent gas consulting firm in Calgary, Alberta. “It is hard for the average consumer to translate a refinery closed in Texas or Louisiana with how much they pay at a pump in Alberta.”

In such countries, where stiff gas taxes help induce motorists to drive small, fuel-efficient cars, the griping by Americans about high gasoline prices evokes little sympathy. Ruth Bridger, a spokeswoman for the AA Motoring Trust, a British consumer advocacy group, said Britons look at the sport-utility vehicles that dominate U.S. highways and think, “Serves you right.”

But prices in the United States have risen much faster than those in many parts of the developing world. Governments in developing countries often keep artificial lids on fuel costs – sometimes by making state-owned refineries sell at a loss and using taxpayer funds to keep the refineries running, in other cases by using taxpayer funds to buy imported gasoline.

Therein lies one of the great ironies of the popular revolts against higher energy costs in nations such as Nigeria.

“The fact is, higher oil prices are not being fully passed through to the retail level in many countries,” said Mohsin S. Khan, the director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the International Monetary Fund. “In the States, higher oil passes through to retail prices very quickly.” But in the developing world, Khan said, “virtually everywhere, consumers are being protected in many ways, with governments absorbing the cost in their budgets. There is some pass-through, but it’s not complete.”

Such subsidies are by no means confined to big oil-exporting countries, like Venezuela and Iran, where gasoline prices are famously cheap, in the tens of cents per gallon.

In India, which imports about 75 percent of its crude oil, domestic fuel prices have risen less than one-third as fast as international prices, according to Hans Timmer, an economist at the World Bank; the government’s failure to implement a system of market-determined prices caused state-owned refineries to lose $4.6 billion in 2004.

Next door in Pakistan, despite increases of 4.9 to 8.9 percent in September, fuel prices are still more than 15 percent under world market levels, Timmer said. Many sub-Saharan African governments have been unable to continue the budgetary cost of providing gasoline cheaply, so some have allowed prices to rise at least partially.

Indonesians have been paying about 90 cents a gallon for gasoline – until this weekend, when President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announced that gasoline prices would nearly double and kerosene prices would triple. Officials said they had no choice, since fuel subsidies have swelled to about one-third of government spending. On Friday, police were using tear gas to disperse thousands of demonstrators.