Actually, it appears that a big part of the problem is the exporting of gas and gas products due to U.S. driver conservation, high prices and hard times.
Take a look at this chart of Total Petroleum Products in the last few years....
4-Week Avg U.S. Exports of Total Petroleum Products (Thousand Barrels per Day)
Therefore, any amount of new production in America may simply be shipped to another country, like China where more profit can be secured, versus the market here.
Yes, it's capitalism but it's also painful at the pump. Perhaps at least encouraging (or forcing)
Oil Companies to sell a specific percentage of production in America would be a way to go.
This is sort of like the cost of water - when most people conserve water the price of water goes up, not down locally. Luckily, access water cannot be sold internationally or we would be screwed, once again.
The more than passingly strange thing is - why is it that we are now exporting millions of barrels of
oil products versus lowering our dependency on foreign
oil and the price at the pump? Shipping oil products to foreign countries has got to be expensive versus selling it for just a little less here.
This entire scenario is sort of pissing me off.