Greed.

Haven't you seen record profits being recorded by oil companies over the past few years?

one thing to remember is that this is not the current price per barrel they are reporting on the price of oil Futures. where you pay slightly higher that the current rate with the assumption that oil prices will rise in the future. this causes an issue because people will not sell their futures if oil prices are low, this reduces the supply, and prices of gas goes up.

its bs, i love how everyone said oh gas prices are going up because of oil prices, example, one day oil went up 9 dollars, and gas jumped the same day by 40 cents, coincidence? f that i think not, i think its bs that now that oil is dropping our gas prices stay sky high. its all political bs

i had a chart a few weeks ago that showed oil prices vs gas prices and how gas went up in line with oil prices but lagged when oil began dropping, of course you don't need no stinking chart to know that.

basically, your local gas stations are keeping it up on purpose to make a profit to make up for "losses" when gas prices were going up. a few store owners have been quoted stating that.

then you have the speculators that are the primary blame to oil prices being so damn high. sure the dollar value and higher demand in China have a role, but this article has numbers to prove how speculators drove up the price of oil well beyond what it should have naturally gone up with supply/demand factors.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080910/ap_on_go_co/oil_speculation

now the main reason it is going down is those same speculators are taking their money out, for a very nice profit i might add...

Told you so.

those 6 magic letters.

P-R-O-F-I-T.

I don't know the market, but I believe what T3mujin said about "speculators" driving the price and keeping it high.

Regardless, this price hike know is due to the Hurricane, I can actually belive this one. The hurricane has shut down a high percentage of our oil pumpers, and people are PANICKING because they think Gas is going to dry over the next few days because of that.

There's alot of factors, but the bottom line is if you buy more of something that can't get restocked fast enough, the price technically goes up. And the people panicking are driving this price as much as anybody else.

Also - don't forget that oil is used to make almost every product under the sun (even toothpaste).