Ass-ume the position.

With Exxon Mobil's announcement of their $11.7Bn profit for the last quarter, any shred of doubt about profiteering has gone down the drain.

Of course, suggesting that $4 a gallon has anything to do with the record profits just makes you an anti-patriotic retarded terrorist as far as the oil companies are concerned. The excuse as always is "we're just passing the cost on" but that's obviously not true. Then we get fobbed off with "it's complicated". No it isn't. The oil companies pull oil out of the ground, or buy crude, then refine it, then slap on a healthy profit margin before raping the public blind. It's really not that complicated and to suggest that the public don't understand this is to illustrate how out-of-touch the oil companies are with reality. Even the financial analysts said three months ago that supply and demand could not justify the $4 gallon despite the high price of crude.

So now the price of oil is coming down again, which is great, because it means the price at the pump is coming down too. Or not. Despite oil falling to a 4-month low this week, the price at the pump is at a 4-month high. Once again, the public is fobbed off with horseshit excuses. The best one is this : "well the stuff in the underground tanks is the expensive stuff we bought previously, so it has to be sold off before we can bring the price down". Ok - that's fine. I can live with that - it'll only take 3 days because no petrol station in existance has underground tanks that can hold more than 3 days-worth of product.

But of course it doesn't take 3 days. It takes weeks if not months before the prices come down. Which is the converse of when the price goes up. Well surely we should apply the same argument shouldn't we? "Well the stuff in the underground tanks is the cheap stuff we bought previously, so it has to be sold off before we can put the price up".

Ah yes - but it doesn't work like that. When the price of crude goes up, the price at the pump goes up the same morning. Again, "it's complicated" and the regular consumer like you or I wouldn't understand the technicalities of it. We're too simple.

The facts are simple - oil companies profiteer all the time. In reality, the price at the pump should lag the cost of crude by about 3 weeks. That's about the amount of time it takes to ship, refine and distribute the product. Any time the price goes up on the same day is clear proof of profiteering.

See - it's not that complicated.