A year ago, crude oil was $65 a barrel and retail gasoline cost over $3.00 a gallon.

Now, crude oil is $85 a barrel and gasoline costs $2.59 a gallon at the pump.

The financial stories are all about "oil companies being squeezed by refining margins". They're about to report 3rd quarter profits, and it's expected that those profits will be lower than a year ago.

Companies like Exxon are sitting on billions of barrels of proven reserves, which they can get out of the ground for $4 to $10 per barrel. Their "upstream" profits are great, but they're settling for less profit in refining right now.

I think this is clear proof that the oil companies do conspire to control gasoline prices. In the wind-up to the election and with a Democrat Congress, they don't need any more record-profit headlines so they're keeping the retail price down right now.

As soon as they get a chance though, they'll raise gasoline prices back up to standard markup rates - which at $85 a barrel, would be $3.50-$4.00 per gallon. In the meantime, they're pumping and selling crude oil for record prices with the potential of doing that for a long time to come.

The stock market knows this, and that's why oil company stocks are still going straight up.