ACP wrote:


$10B in quarterly profits is a whole bunch of money but percent wise, as I
believe it should be viewed, it's not out of line.

Let's say I own the rights to all the water in the US. Every drop of
it.
I then price it out at a rate where I'll only net a nickel a gallon.
It would be easy to say, "look, I'm only making a nickel a gallon"- but
if everybody had to pay that much for water there might not be enough
money in the entire economy to pay the bill.

Until the other components of free enterprise, open market economics
(like competition, for a start) begin to apply to the oil company
cartels the isolated argument from that universe of vairables: "We
deserve to make as much money as we possibly can as fast as we can make
it" will cause a lot of resentment at the fuel dock.

$10B in quarterly profits puts the lie to all the excuses offered
weekly (weakly?) about fuel prices. It's not "uncertainty in the middle
East", or "fear of future hurricanes", or "the cost of switching from
winter blend to summer blend fuels". Rather obviously the vast majority
of the price increases is being retained as corporate profits, and any
increased cost of oil company operations is *not* driving the price of
gas or diesel anywhere nearly as much as corporate greed.