Which large oil companies do you speak of? Do they eat caviar in a smoke-filled ballroom with smoking jackets and sip cognac and laugh at how they gouge the American consumer? Face it. We ran out of cheap oil in the 1970’s and we will be a slave to Canada, Mexico, and OPEC until we have a windmill powering every automobile. The current boom in the Bakken and other horizontal plays is about 10% of our demand. My advice would be to get used to a minimum $3.00 a gallon gasoline for your lifetime and buy oil company stocks as a hedge. Barring a worldwide collapse, those days are gone. Too many Chinese and Indians are wanting to drive cars instead of bicycles. They are the reason the price of oil increases every year.