I dont think all the blame can be put on the oil companies. Remember the American Dollar gains some of it's support from oil price through Petrodollar utilization. Also taxes are huge on Gasoline as in my post above. I think the number one reason for the high oil prices are that this is how inflated (freshly printed) dollars are distributed to the rest of the world. Thats why domestic production has been shit on for 40 years because if we produced Oil/Energy here the inflation from that production would stay here and there would be no avenue to export inflation while at the same time helping to support the dollar through the Petrodollar/Reserve Currency world system.