[DTogo]

5 Companies in the US with refining capacity over 1M bbl/day:
Conoco Phillips: 2,198,400
Exxon Mobil: 1,846,500
BP: 1,504,500
Valero Energy: 1,449,528
Chevron Texaco: 1,006,901

8 Companies with refining capacity over 500K bbl/day
Marathon Oil: 948,000
Sunoco: 900,000
Premcor: 768,400
Koch Industries: 763,126
Motiva Enterprises: 746,500
PDV America: 719,300
Royal Dutch Shell: 597,200
Tesoro: 562,500

Source: www.eia.doe.gov

[Rodney King]

Well, you were talking retail initially, but if you want to shift the discussion to refining:

Are you claiming that all 14 of those companies are colluding together?

Are you claiming that these companies could have colluded 5 years ago, but only recently decided to?

Are you claiming that the other independent refiners out there (and there are a lot of them)aren't able to make a killing by undercutting these guys a little?

[Rodney King]

According to the following chart, refining has become less centralized. In fact, the big 5 oil companies have been selling refinging capacity to independents. (Note: FRS in these charts are the majors that report through the governments Financial Reporting System). So, if it was more controllable in 1990, then now, why did they wait to raise prices? Were they stupid? Or perhaps maybe the price increases are a function of the market.