You said — “If that is true, we ought to see some refiners ramping up to 100% capacity to take market share away from those who are cutting back. And if I saw that happening, I would concede your point. Unfortunately I do not know where to easily access that information.”
Nope, not if you’re smart in business. There’s no benefit to cutting your profit to the point of not making money from some business move that won’t “pan out”...
In other words, if I’m a store across the street from another store selling the same stuff — I could engage in aggressive price cutting and/or other aggressive marketing moves (other than simply advertising a few sales in the paper) — and then we both would be involved in some *real* cut-throat competition. BUT — that’s to the benefit of neither one of us (unless the aim of one is to *completely run out of business* the other one).
But, we know that the refineries are not going to completely run one refinery out of business and have them “close up shop” — so they all know it’s not in their own best interests in *making the most money possible* to engage in such competition.
Those two stores that I mentioned — they’ll both be better off, financially, if they “get along” together, with both of them on each side of their street.
They’ll both make *more profits* that way...
—
There’s *no collusion* here — just *enlightened business self-interest* in how to make the most profits possible from the consumer (and everyone “know it”...)
And, of course, we all know it’s not bad for businesses to make the most money possible from the consumer...
This enlightened self interest runs into a little bitty problem when it begins to appear to voters that there is effectively no competition in an industry which supplies an essential service. That problem is spelled "antitrust" and in the more extreme case "nationalization".