You guys just don't understand how this works.
We buy massive amounts of oil, and store it in caverns in the ground. Then every day we buy massive amounts of oil and consume it, but in the process of consuming it we have Big Oil companies doing the refining of the final products we use. It is imperative that each Big Oil company has hundreds if not thousands of employees making over a million dollars a year, to supervise the 10's of thousands of refinery and transportation workers that make $40,000 to $70,000 a year. All those massive salaries combined with share buybacks and shareholder dividends put the price at the pump at all time highs. Therefore the government releases the oil purchased at lower prices from the reserve and replaces it with high priced oil, while Big Oil still makes all that money on every gallon we consume, even the oil from the reserves. Simple, see?
All kidding aside, oil companies are using this high priced environment to pad their profits at record levels at the expense of all of us, while still being handed money by the government. It's out of control.