L. Neil Smith on the oil industry

L. Neil Smith has some issues with the way the oil industry is conducting itself:

Let's review, and along the way, examine some details I didn't go into before. Despite those who hold a contrary view (some among us, perhaps unduly influenced by Ayn Rand, never seem to have absorbed the unpleasant fact that corporations are not our friends and don't give a rap about freedom) I do not for an instant believe that the current price of gas — over four dollars in some places, with predictions going as high as six — has anything at all to do with natural market forces.

The commonest maundering you hear when this topic is discussed, is that there's a lack of refinery capacity, brought about by a couple of disastrous refinery fires a few years back. If this is true, then the oil industry isn't simply evil, it's impossibly stupid for not having included such a contingency in its plans. Moreover, as my wife points out, they can throw up a new office building in three months if they really want to. What's so much mysteriously harder about rebuilding a refinery?

The simple, ugly fact is that, while ordinary, productive-class Americans are going to the poorhouse, just to buy gas enough to get their kids to school, themselves to work, and go to the grocery store, the oil companies are raking in record profits — as who wouldn't, selling the world's second most abundant liquid for four dollars a gallon?