Crude prices are NOT a true function of supply and demand. Why not? Because in the commodities market, you don't have to take delivery of the product you are buying and selling. These are financial instruments. If we only had end users buying from suppliers, we would have a much more stable market. Do we think the demand for oil has doubled in the last year? Of course not. Has the supply really halved? No. The price is very volatile in the short run thanks to speculation in the market. Some oil producing nation has some instability, speculators drive the price, and presto, oil goes from $80 to $130/bbl in no time. The true supply has not been impacted enough to drive that price change.
As for oil company profits, they do not come from the retail price of gasoline. They come for the price of oil. Oil companies post billions upon billions in profits, and it's not 5 cents per liter at a time. So, yes, it's fruitless to complain about the price of gas as gouging, as the reality is it is not, at least not at the retail level.
Where we're getting the shaft is at the ground level. Oil is the most precious and least renewable resource this nation has at this time. The world is so crude dependent and the alternatives are not coming for some time. So, the people of Canada have billions, no, trillions, of dollars buried in the ground. But, we essentially give it away. Oil companies threaten to pack up and leave if we enact royalties, but c'mon, where would they go? If there was free/cheap oil in abundance elsewhere, they'd be gone.
When negotiating, a threat is a reveal. It shows what you DO NOT want to do. See, if it was in your best interest, you'd just do it. When Big Oil threatens to leave, we need to call their bluff. Sure, they might pack up, a little bit, to scare us, but the reality is that if they knew of better places to spend their capital, they'd be long gone. Norway called their bluff, and Norway has a massive public treasury today. We have nothing.
I don't mind paying $1.50/L. I don't mind that oil is over $100/bbl. I hate that the oil, a publicly owned resource, is practically given away by our government. Yes, Alberta's royalties are lower than the right-wing bastion of Texas. Insane.