Three separate internal confidential memos from Mobil, Chevron and Texaco ( http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/energy/fs/) have been obtained by The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights.
These memos outline a deliberate agenda to gouge prices and create artificial scarcity by limiting capacities of and outright closing oil refineries. This was a nationwide lobbying effort led by the American Petroleum Institute to encourage refineries to do this.
An internal Chevron memo(http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/energy/fs/5103.pdf) states; "A senior energy analyst at the recent API convention warned that if the US petroleum industry doesn't reduce its refining capacity it will never see any substantial increase in refinery margins."
The Memos make clear that blockages in refining capacity and opening new refineries did not come from environmental organizations, as the oil industry claimed, but via a deliberate policy of limitation and price gouging at the behest of the oil industry itself.


Geologist studies have repeatedly claimed there is still close to a trillion barrels of untapped oil under Saudi Arabia. Not a hard fact to come across with some mild research.