Is Greed Also to Blame for Oil Price Declines?

Readers clinging to old wives’ tales about crude oil pricing mechanisms (“Oil Firms’ Profits Highlight Their Greed,” Letters, Nov. 6) should stop to consider what drives oil prices when they go down (as they did drastically in 1986 and 1998, for example) or stay flat for extended periods (as in the late 1980s and much of the 1990s).

Do the same executives convene and decide to lower their profits for years at a time?

Jerry Nichols

Manhattan Beach