I'll try not to repeat Economics 101 here. I work in big oil. There are no Darth Vader's running my company, a super major. We operate in a world market economy. The risks of breaking FTC regulations are extremely high which may include loss of job, big personal fines, and prison terms. Allegation of fraud are heavily investigated by the justice department.

I walk through one of our trading benches each day. Our traders do not set the prices of the commodities. Their phone conversations are taped, and their emails and instant messages are scanned for key words and phrases and reviewed for security and trading violations. They buy and sell products on the open market just like any of you could do if you had the means or infrastructure to move product to wholesalers or consumers. You actually can buy futures of crude oil, natural gas, propane, gold, pork bellies, etc. through investment brokers. Why don't you do a search on futures, find a site, and look at the wholesale price of some commodity, like unleaded regular? Then you'll know how much difference there is between wholesale refined product and retail paid at the pump. Most of it is tax. The refiner makes about 8 cents a gallon, the retailer makes about 10 cents a gallon. Many branded stations are independently owned by individuals, not by the oil company on the signage. And owners must draw in customers to buy non-fuel items at their stations with high markups like bottled water. So, where's the gouging? Hmmm. What are the state and federal governments bringing in? I'm not complaining about the tax on fuel since a lot of it goes to road building and repair.

My coworkers and I do not get any company discounts on gasoline. We buy it and share the pain of unanticipated higher costs just like all consumers. I've worked at several of our plants over the years. The engines, heaters, and other units that run some of these processes use natural gas and lots of it. The plants have to buy the natural gas at market price to run the units, not at a company discount price. If big oil could control the pricing, it could always be advantaged in all situations. In 31 years in the business, I've seen record high prices (mid-1970's), extremely low prices (1986-1987; late 1990's), and high prices again (2007). On an inflation adjusted basis, gasoline is no more expensive than it was in 1981. What has hurt all of us is that we have budgeted our personal expenses for cheap gasoline. Then when it has gone up rapidly, we have to adjust quickly for it. If gasoline prices had simply risen gradually along with inflation (or the consumer price index) we would not have noticed.