So much for raping the public. Maybe you should reserve your socialist envy for big beer.
The U.S. government has investigated gasoline prices about 30 times over the last 20 years but oil companies were never found to have “fixed” prices. Most recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) completed an exhaustive study of alleged market manipulation to increase gasoline prices in the weeks following Hurricane Katrina late last summer. The FTC report, released in May 2006, included these findings: No evidence that refiners manipulated prices by running refineries below full production capacity, restricting gasoline production or diverting gasoline from the U.S. market to less lucrative foreign markets. No evidence to suggest refinery expansion decisions over the past 20 years resulted from either unilateral or coordinated attempts to manipulate prices. No evidence to suggest companies reduced inventories to increase or manipulate prices or exacerbate price spikes. No situations that might allow one firm – or a small collusive group – to manipulate gasoline futures prices by using storage assets to restrict gasoline movements into New York Harbor, the key delivery point for gasoline. BTW....I own stock in Exxon Mobil, and Conoco-Phillips. I have a selfish interest in seeing them do well. I have owned these stocks for 25+ years, and in the bad days of the oil bust in the early 1990's profits were down and margins were very low. Also, your referenced website, Public Citizen is also against nuclear power and is pushing for a future course in which the government will decide on how you will travel (and when probably). They are definitely socialist, if not outight communist. Windfall profits taxes are espoused on the oil companies. So that means once big oil is "tamed", how much longer before windfall profits taxes are imposed upon farmers for increasing their profits to obscene levels from the ethanol boom? On ADM for their excess profits from the same boom? On real estate sales in areas where property values have gone up 50%+ in the last 10 years? Where do you draw the line????