Quote Originally Posted by Ronin13 View Post
You are so right, one country (or 3 in our case) has absolutely nothing to do with gas prices... that's why gas companies are making so very little per liter of fuel because of gas taxes that cut down profits for gas companies (which in turn makes it harder for them to advance), and leads to gross over price.
Gas companies generally = oil companies. Gasoline isn't the only product in the supply chain that they make their money. In 2011, the five largest oil companies made $117B in profit. The US government also granted a few billion in tax breaks. As far as making it harder, Exxon, for example, had their profits grow by 69% from 2010 to 2011.



In reality, We are the number 1 petroleum user in the world- by a friggin long shot! But we are a low producer.

At $3.20/gallon almost $.65 of that is tax. So yes, gas prices can be set by government.
Federal tax on gasoline is $0.184 per gallon. The rest of the tax is state and local taxes. These are relatively fixed costs. The variability in gas pricing comes from the volatility in production and in oil pricing. Speculators have had more impact in the cost of your gasoline than the feds.

Also, we're not exporting NEARLY as much as we import. Why would we export anyway? Instead just produce and refine our own oil (little to no import and no export) and we would cut costs significantly.
You keep saying "we". It's not "we". It's "they". The oil and gasoline, and the refineries all belong to the oil companies. We don't get to tell them what to do with their business. They export it because it's in their best interests to do so.