@tiki god

I agree, the US is good about transporting petroleum fuels. It’s transported through a rather large system of pipelines, terminals and stations, with one petroleum product pushing another. The unfortunate thing is, ethanol is too corrosive to transport through existing pipelines. It has to be transported with tanker trucks and mixed at fueling stations. This means a good portion of the existing infrastructre (pipelines, ports, etc.) isn’t capable of handling ethanol based fuels.

As to how much energy companies make, it’s actually a mute point when you consider it on the entire scale. Yes, Exxon, Shell, et all, are making fist loads of cash, but combined American Oil companies only control about 7% or proven oil reserves worldwide. The other 93% are controlled by large, nationalized oil companies. Just think how much money the governments of China, Saudia Arabia, & Russia are making from their oil industry. Do you really expect US Oil companies to compete with entire countries if they didn’t make a lot of money? By that I mean, it costs $1 million dollars a day, domestically, to drill an oil well. So if you’re drilling on a few hundred wells a day those cash reserves go pretty fast.

And the reason gas prices are so high has so many different factors it’s silly. Here’s a few:

Different states have different requirements for gasoline. This causes refineries to have to produce different blends and octanes of gasoline. If the US had a standard, gas would be cheaper.

Oil is valued in US dollars. To maintain an equivalent value in foreign currency the cost per barrel of oil fluctuates with the dollar. The lower the value of the dollar, the higher the cost of a barrel of oil.

Political instability in areas of major production like the Middle East causes increased speculation as to the availablity of oil.

Oil is openly traded as a commodity.

I realize a lot of this is generalized, but trust me. I work for “Big Oil”. I know what I’m talking about.