Q When the price of gas is high, people come out of the woodwork claiming a “big oil” conspiracy, and politicians like Barbara Boxer jump onto the soapbox, promising to investigate the evildoers. Now that crude oil has hit a 12-year low, do you hear much from the conspiracy theorists?

I suspect not. I read in The Wall Street Journal that North American oil and gas producers are losing nearly $2 billion every week at current prices. But I am sure conspiracy theorists suspect that’s all a tax dodge.

Tim Sparks

Saratoga

A Normally, you would be right on target. But the fact that Californians are paying nearly a buck more a gallon than the rest of the country — $2.80 here compared with $1.93 across the United States as of Friday — has many crying foul.

Q When President Obama took office in 2009, there was a fall from $147 to $32 a barrel for crude oil in six months. The price for a gallon of gas in California at this lowest point was about $1.50 a gallon. I remember paying that, or a few cents more. I wondered then if gas was going to go down to $1 a gallon like it did in 1999, but it did not.

I would understand a slight increase because of our special fuel blends, but now we are paying prices like oil is in the $75- to $90-a-barrel price range.

Oil companies are making huge profits off California consumers. We are again getting screwed, plain and simple.

Errol Emrich

San Jose

A And …

Q What is up with our $2.80 average gas prices? With the price of a barrel of oil dropping to a many-year low of $31.11, why would our prices still be above $2.50 per gallon? Do you know the price of our gas the last time barrels of oil were in the $31 range, being that it was years ago?

Thomas Gazdayka

Mountain View

A That would have been November 2008. The state average was $1.85 a gallon.

Nationally, analysts say, prices will go lower in 2016 for the fourth straight year to the $2.28 range while states like us with reformulated gas will hover around $2.80 on average, with $3 likely around Memorial Day.

Prices have been falling a couple of cents a day for the past week after jumping 25 cents a gallon the three previous weeks. Here are a few reasons why:

Gasbuddy.com reports that California refining issues have mostly been resolved. The refinery utilization percentage for West Coast states got to as low as 82.1 percent during Christmas. Last week, it improved to 88.2 percent.

Imports hit 100,000 barrels of gas a day two weeks ago, a huge jump from 39,000 barrels per day in December. Gasbuddy.com expects more imports to arrive in California this week by ship, keeping the downward pressure on prices.