If we are gonna pay over $4 a gallon for gas, might as well….

weak cut and paste from my 8 seconds of research, once again chain letters are crap, also doesn’t matter where you buy your gas since the way the pipelines are set up your not actually buying gas refined from the company you buy it from they work on a credit system ie. pull out a barrel in ohio put in a barrel in new jersey etc.

What oil companies, if any, do not import oil? I would buy from them alone if I knew who they were. Sue Copeland Kilgore, Texas

You’d be hard-pressed to find an oil company involved in refining that doesn’t import oil. The bottom line is they don’t produce enough oil on their own to run their refineries and produce gasoline, diesel and other products. According to the Energy Information Administration, which keeps energy statistics for the federal government, less than 40 percent of the crude oil used by U.S. refineries was produced in the United States. The EIA collects data on companies’ imports of crude oil and refined products, and that information is available on its Web site, http://www.eia.doe.gov. However, EIA notes it’s impossible to track those imports and figure out the origin of gas sold at any particular station.

John Porretto AP Business Writer, Houston

(Dominic beat me to this…) Did you know that the majority of oil imported into the US is actually from Canada?

Did you also know that oil companies extracting the oil from within Canada, sells the oil back to Canadians at market rates? So buying “Canadian” doesn’t mean I’m getting a cheaper price – even though we produce it!

Having friends and family in the business, I have learned that the actual cost of extracting 1 barrel from the ground is about $14. The majority of the costs associated with refining that oil could be covered by the by-products produced from the refining process. However, thanks to some creative accounting all the expenses are placed on the gas produced thus making it look like it costs more to make. The by products are essentially free.

The long and short of it is, there are select people in positions of power that have a vested interest in the rise of the price of oil. Instability in the Middle East is a good way to make the market feel uneasy and raise those prices and add a couple more billion to their pocket books. Pretty sad – greedy bastards.