[Shane@DBPerformance]

The oil companies can pretty much print money at will. There is no true competetion between them, they are an oligopoly. The only competition is to find more and refine it for cheaper. Outside of the turbo DSM world, most people don't have much brand loyalty to specific kinds of gas. So if one oil company decides to raise the price of gas one day, the others don't say "Hey, lets lower ours, so that more people will buy ours.", instead they say "That's great, let's raise ours too, we can make even more money."