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that still leaves a wide margin for profit, or gouging.

So Profit = gouging?

Let me ask this, how much money, per gallon of gas are you allowing to cover the cost of the expansion projects that I have previously mentioned?

If a refiner spends $400,000,000 for an expansion, what is the rate of return you will allow for on that investment, and how many years are you allowing for capitol recovery?

Without answers to those questions you cannot equate profit to gouging.

The same thing has happened here in Arizona. I calculated out the increase in the price of crude oil over the last three months and the usual increase in refining margin between Feb and May that I figured out during the last two years. That only brought the price to about $2.90 per gallon, yet regular unleaded is selling for about $3.07 here in Phoenix. So there's about another 15-20 cents per gallon of cost that's been added to the price of gasoline this year, which I think is caused by: 1) increased costs of adding ethanol to the gasoline at 10% of total volume, including about 5 cents per gallon from the 52 cents per gallon ethanol tariff, and 2) another 1.5 cents per gallon in state and local sales taxes on the higher price. So about 90% of the extra cost this year is because of the new ethanol requirement, which reportedly actually increases air pollution compared to pure gasoline. Use of ethanol does reduce our dependence on foreign oil to some extent, although a lot of water is used to grow the crops and a lot of electric power from nuclear/coal/natural gas is used in ethanol refining.

So we are getting hit harder than usual at the gas pump this year because of the new ethanol requirement. Perhaps we need to use ethanol to become a little less dependent on imported oil, but we don't need the 5 cents per gallon tariff on ethanol. That tariff exists entirely to improve the profitability of US ethanol producers, which will tend to increase investment in ethanol production. The question is whether investment would be adequate without the tariff, and I think there probably would be plenty of investment without the tariff.

First of all you’re preaching to the choir. I didn’t assert that profit equals gouging. I only asserted that some of the increased cost can attributed to profit OR gouging. I don’t have any quarrel with profit, within reason in the case of a de facto monopoly.
I also have no quarrel with capital investment and depreciation of the investment as a component of the cost of a gallon of gasoline, but the cost for a depreciated investment is spread over perhaps 20 years. So depreciation of capital investment would not result in a short term spike as we’ve seen, and I would think the refiners would be sharing news about investment in refining capacity to ward off charges of gouging or excessive profit.. If the investment is required do to new regulations, such as for the blending of ethanol, then that too would be a depreciated capital investment, so again, if they share the cost data perhaps we can then blame the regulators, instead of the refiners that should have a profit motive. BUT, my original point was, the dramatic increase in cost cannot be solely attributed to the world cost of crude. In fact, the per barrel cost is down substantially today from the recent spike, but the retail price is still at the peak.
And, if you know the actual cost breakdown attributable to depreciated investment that has contributed to the extraordinary price increase, by all means, share with us.