Ever since the trucker strike a few months ago, and then the hurricane soon after, the price of gasoline has been fluctuating madly. I saw it reach as high as 93¢/litre ($3.52/gal) at one point. For a while profits were fixed by DACO (which is basically the local equivalent of the Department of Consumer Affairs), but recently the head of DACO deregulated the prices but released a statement saying that there was no reason prices should go above 70¢, and consumers should not let gas stations try to gouge them by charging more than that.

Freed from its yoke, the price once again began to fluctuate, but as it settled down, an interesting dichotomy arose. While most of the gas stations are now selling gas for around 84¢ ($3.14), Shell stations have refused to raise prices unnecessarily and have kept it around 64¢ ($2.42). As a result, while most stations are operating fairly normally, Shell stations always have long lines of cars waiting to get gas. Another consequence of this is that usually by the time I'm up and out of the house in the evening, all the Shell stations are closed with signs saying they are out of gas.

I'm impressed (and somewhat confused) by this apparent altruism. While it's quite admirable to keep your prices 20¢ lower than all your competitors, it seems to be directly in opposition to the law of supply and demand; if you run out of your product before the end of the business day, you're charging too little for it. I wonder what more there is to the story, because I'm not quite ready to accept that Shell is doing this out of their love for the common man.