It would be better if you considered the liberal use of paragrafhs, but I managed to read your reply, none the less.
What I find fascinating is the contradiction within your argument. Your concern is that there are only 5 major oil companies operating within the US today. I don't know if that's true, but I'll take your word for it.
Because there are only 5, you think the government should regulate them. That's the part I don't get.
Certainly there was a time when there were more than 5, perhaps 10, 20. who can remember?
Was it not government regulation that reduced that distant memory of a greater number to the 5 we have today?
Will more government regulation reduce that 5 to 3, or to 1?
Or maybe even none.
no it was mostly the low of oil that allowed the number to become less.
The government believed rightly/wrongly that due to the low price of oil and increase importance worldwide of OPEC and other national oil companies that to have the oil industry in the US survive it had to allow oil companies to merger This they believed would allow the USA to compete on the global stage. Which to the governments credit it has to a large degree.
However, that decrease in American oil companies has also had the unwanted side effect of reducing the internal competition of the oil companies. When oil was low this was not a problem because the governments responsibility was to ensure that oil and gasoline continued to flow.
The government made a trade off. It allowed the mergers of the oil companies so the industry could survive when oil was low. Now that oil is high the need for competition is more important for the consumer to ensure a free market.
ensuring a free market is a constantly changing responsibility of the government. Sometimes you want more competition and sometimes you want less. The "market" is very good at the latter but very bad at the former.