The good news is that gasoline prices have inched down since Gov. Huntsman announced that he will investigate the matter. Fuel has dropped from an average of $2.95 a gallon Sept. 11 to $2.82 as of Friday, according to the AAA. Unfortunately, it's still 38 cents per gallon higher than the national average of $2.44.

Threatening an investigation must not be enough.

We hope Huntsman gets to the bottom of this and avoids another political dog-and-pony show. We saw that happen when the nation's oil companies were accused of using Hurricane Katrina as an excuse for price-gouging. The executives were paraded before a Senate committee, where they proceeded to argue that keeping the prices high averted a fuel shortage by dampening consumer demand.

It made good TV for C-SPAN and "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." It gave the appearance that Congress cared, but it did not result in any meaningful reform, such as laws against price gouging.

We don't want to see the same thing happen in Utah. So far, Huntsman and his staff are doing their best to find out why Utahns are paying more than the rest of the country for gasoline, but a recent hearing on the matter looked a lot like a rerun of the Katrina investigation.

At the hearing, conducted by Department of Commerce Director Francine A. Giani, John Hill of the Utah Petroleum Marketers and Retailers Association blamed the price discrepancies on retailers having older, higher-priced gas sitting in inventory -- that is, in the bulk storage tanks at gas stations.

However, that flimsy excuse was blown away when Lee Peacock of the Utah Petroleum Association claimed that high prices are the result of higher demand in Utah.

It obviously can't be both.

Fortunately, Giani isn't buying the excuses either. She said industry representatives needed to provide proof that stations are still using higher-priced gasoline, as well as information on the operation of the state's five oil refineries and their role in the cost of fuel.

Asking politely for the information isn't enough, however. Peacock and Hill already said they couldn't guarantee that data would be forthcoming since individual companies would have to hand it over.

Huntsman and Giani need to make it clear that this is not a voluntary request but an official demand that cannot be put on the "Do after doomsday" list.

If the documents are not produced in a timely manner, we hope that the state will find a way to obtain them through subpoena, or at least expose the hold-outs so the public knows who has something to hide. Sometimes bad publicity can be as potent as a threat of jail time in getting people to do the right thing.

If the investigation finds that the high prices are unjustified, the state needs to do more than just point it out. Officials need to make sure it doesn't happen again. The Legislature could enact laws against profiteering or cap the wholesale gasoline price. It could also require gas stations to post the wholesale price of fuel on their pumps, just as stations must display the taxes charged for gas. That would allow consumers to judge whether or not they are being gouged.

The state should also punish any who took advantage of all of us by keeping prices high while wholesale costs dropped. How about a tax on retailers that would kick in when the retail price varies too much from wholesalefi

Utah drivers deserve reasonable gas prices and they won't get it unless the state pursues this matter to the fullest.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A6.

Do you agree?