We pay Global Spot prices set by traders on Wall Street and in London. Has Zero to do with the oil companies. Since the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed by the passing of the Financial Modernization Act during the Clinton Presidency, speculation on commodities was allowed again, Glass Steagall was passed after the Great Depression and commodities were only allowed to be purchased on Wall Street by companies who actually took physical deliveries of corn, oil, wheat etc. Now anyone, including Big Banks/Hedge Funds can just buy up oil, wheat, gold, silver, u name it, never taking delivery, and manipulate prices. Do you own paper shares of Gold? Good luck if there's ever a run on Gold, there are way more paper shares of gold out there than what exists physically. It's the same with all the other commodities. Anyways, from my recollection, speculators have caused like three major stock exchange crashes in history dating back to the 1800's. Including the Great Depression. When u realize there's an army of traders sitting at desks at all these financial behemoths like Goldman Sachs who spend their days buying and selling everything from cotton to oil to corn for 10 hrs. a day trying to make a buck and 1 bushel of corn trades hands 15 times in 1 hour, well anyways. If you look at the price of gas historically, it was stable until Glass-Steagall was repealed, and then up and up and up it went. Did I tell you Glass-Steagall also prohibited Banks from playing on Wall Street? 2008 crash was a direct result, and now we are 40 trillion in the hole s a nation.