Yes, but the oil companies were losing their shirts at that time. It was not sustainable. If you want to look at the trend, you need to factor out the time periods when the market was not operating at a sustainable level. One of those was in the 90s.
The other thing you need to do is look at the price of oil, not the price of gasoline. The price of gasoline is heavily influenced by the refining industry, which has its own issues. An increase in the efficiency at the refinery level could mask a trend.
And today people are complaining about excessive oil company profits. It all averages out, but try to tell that to guys like Bill O'Reilly or to government pukes as they fire off subpoenas to oil executives.
An increase in the efficiency at the refinery level could mask a trend.
The increase in efficiency IS a trend. That's one reason price, supply and demand stay under control. 150 years ago machinery was a tiny fraction of the efficiency it is today. That's what the doom-sayers overlooked then and one of the things they overlook today and that's why we haven't run out of coal fifty years after we were supposed to.