For example, if a company sells a product to a subsidiary (or vice versa), they can't claim a profit on it. I believe there can be mark-up on it, if they do something to it. But a paper-only profit cannot be claimed. Besides, their tax returns and financial statements are consolidated and everything washes-out. Any profit claimed by the one counts as an expense for the other; and no extra profit is claimed. I'm a CPA and this is standard accounting. You may consider subsidiaries to be some super-secret thing hidden from us, but corporations have to be open about who they own and who owns them.

Secondly, there would be no need to do that. Unless every major oil company worldwide is doing that, a single company could never artificially inflate the price through its subsidiaries. Because nobody would buy their oil And if every company was doing that, there would be no need to. They could just set an artificially high price and do away with your so-called fraud. In the end, price is set by the buyer. If you're willing to buy, they'll sell it. The only reason they don't completely gouge us is because of political implications (ie, people blaming Bush) and economic implications (more focus on alternatives).

I believe that two of the major problems is that oil companies have no incentive to build more refineries in America because they're only in competition with themselves. So they have set-up a de facto monopoly and have kept the supply artificially low. The other problem is that prices are usually set on the future's market, with traders trying to predict future supply issues. And with Bush & Co still rattling sabers at Iran and Venezula, along with the natural turbulance in Iraq and other places worldwide, the traders are scared that prices will keep going up. So they get roped into buying oil at higher and higher prices, due to the instability. And if the oil supply becomes as endangered as these guys fear, they'll have made the right decisions. And until things become more secure (ie, post-Bush) we're unlikely to see them drop any time soon.

Again, I do believe that we are being gouged at the pump, but I really think that many of your facts are incorrect. And while you didn't provide a source, I fear that you're only willing to accept information that reflects what you want it to. But don't let that stop you from picking me as Best Answer. I really will appreciate the extra points.