http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lis...bal_gasprices/
prices are per gallon:
Brazil Brasilia $3.12
Cuba Havana $3.03
Taiwan Taipei $2.84
Lebanon Beirut $2.63
South Africa Johannesburg $2.62
Nicaragua Managua $2.61
Panama Panama City $2.19
Russia Moscow $2.10
Puerto Rico San Juan $1.74
Saudi Arabia Riyadh $0.91
Kuwait Kuwait City $0.78
Egypt Cairo $0.65
Nigeria Lagos $0.38
Venezuela Caracas $0.12
How the frack is it that Puerto Rico only pays $1.74 a gallon of gas when they are a territory of the US???????????
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Answer:
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Little known ruling by the supreme court in 1988 gave the right to individual states and Puerto Rico the right to curb gasoline prices.
Here's the copy and a link to the story:
By STUART TAYLOR JR., SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: April 20, 1988
The Supreme Court ruled by 8 to 0 today that Puerto Rico may regulate the price of gasoline, and that the 50 states are free to do the same if they choose.
The decision also suggests strongly that the Court would uphold regulation by states of the price and allocation of other petroleum products, including home-heating oil.
It was a defeat for oil industry interests and a victory for state and local regulators nationally, as well as for those in Puerto Rico.
Overturning decisions by two lower Federal courts, the Court ruled that Federal law did not pre-empt Puerto Rico's regulation of gasoline prices because Congress had expressed no clear intent to do so when it ended Federal regulation of the price and allocation of petroleum products.
While no other state has a similar system of gasoline price regulation now, the Court treated Puerto Rico, which is a commonwealth, as a state for purposes of its analysis, and made it clear that states are free to impose gasoline price controls if they wish.
Many states have standby legislation authorizing various forms of emergency regulation of sales of petroleum products for use in any future national or local energy crisis. Jeffrey C. Genzer, general counsel of the National Association of State Energy Officials, said that the decision today appeared to support the validity of those laws.
The issue in the case, Puerto Rico v. Isla Petroleum Corp., No. 86-1406, was whether Congress's explicit pre-emption of state laws in 1973, when it provided for comprehensive Federal regulation of the pricing and allocation of oil products, survived the subsequent repeal of the Federal regulatory program. Justice Antonin Scalia, in writing the opinion for the Court, said that it did not.
Justice Scalia added that, even if there had been a ''general Congressional desire'' that repealing Federal regulation of the price and allocation of petroleum products would lead to a free market in such products, Congress had not said so in any ''enacted statutory text.''
Congress required the President to issue regulations controlling prices and allocation of petroleum products in 1973, in the Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act, in response to shortages caused by the Arab oil embargo against the United States. At the same time Congress explicitly barred any state and local regulation that might conflict with Federal law.
The Federal statute and regulations were phased out by the end of 1981. Puerto Rico, which had regulated the prices of gasoline and other oil products before 1973 and suspended its regulations when the Federal law was passed, began regulating gasoline prices again in 1986.
Several oil companies challenged this as pre-empted by sequential effect of Congress's 1973 pre-emption of state laws and its subsequent decision to end Federal regulation.
They won in a Federal District Court and the Temporary Emergency Court of Appeals, which based its decision on the legislative history in Congress and on the pre-emption analysis in a 1986 Supreme Court decision, Transcontinental Pipe Line v. State Oil and Gas Board.
In overturning the appellate court's decision today, Justice Scalia said it had read too broadly some of the statements in the 1986 decision.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor did not take part in the ruling.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpa...757C0A96E948260
