Because price serves as a rationing mechanism. We simply bought gasoline on the world spot market.
When you demand a zillion gallons of gasoline for immediate delivery, you're going to get soaked.
there was plenty of gas for everyone during the late summer boom, and AAA reports miles driven at all time highs.
Uh-huh. We imported a bunch of gasoline from offshore refinieries, and we paid through the nose for it.
So where is the shortage due to lack of refined material?
It was overcome through the marketplace. The result was that we all paid higher prices.
this idea that oil companies force a price increase to cut down on demand because they don't have enough product is not true, demand was higher then ever, who wasn't able to get gasoline that wanted it?
People unwilling to pay the higher price, that's who.
Also, note that you can't just use any old formulation, anywhere, at any time these days. There's something like 34 different formulations of 87-octane unleaded mandated by the Nanny State of Californication. Pretty soon, the Nanny State will tell everyone to use their local winter formula. And that means that leftover "summer blend" gas will either be left to rot (gasoline DOES rot) or sold overseas (if anyone will take that particular formulation).