Who's to blame for record profits for the oil companies?

Much has been made of the recent profits that oil companies have made at a time when gas prices are making headaches for Americans. Democrats lead by BH Obama have proposed a windfall profit tax to tax oil companies for their "excessive profits". While such a strategy is sure to make oil prices increase by adding additional costs to oil companies, I never saw that oil companies were really making extreme profits as many posted only a 3% profit margin. This last week though the top 5 oil companies all posted record profits and incredible profit growth over the last year. It actually started to bother me. For once maybe I saw some reason in the unreasonable. So I started to delve into the major question, who is to blame? Oil speculators? Greedy oil profiteers? Democrats? Wait, wait, wait, could it really be the Democrats... weren't they the ones against big oil?

Yes, but once again in their quest through unreasonable means they have caused the opposite of what they want to happen to happen. By reducing the areas that oil companies can drill in legislation has effectively limited the supply of oil and the ability of oil companies to increase that supply. Combine the limited supply on the WORLD market for emerging market's (like China) desire to secure future energy shares for their growing production need you have the rights (futures) of future oil shares being bought up for ever increasing prices. Some have blamed speculator for driving up prices, and/or US oil companies for driving up production but the US isn't the number one producer of oil and speculators' purchases of oil pale in comparison to the aggregate world purchases of oil for actual use. The DEMOCRATS proposals of punishing speculators and oil producers have one fatal familiar flaw; they can only punish AMERICAN producers and speculators leaving foreign producers free to carve a larger share of the oil market out for themselves and making us MORE DEPENDENT ON FOREIGN OIL. Reduced profits for American companies also mean more induced hardships for American citizens.

All of these has produced a higher-per-barrel price for companies. Unlike many companies, oil producers have had no control over the price of barrels. Once on the world market, competition for oil shares decides the price. Basic economics, when competition for a product increases and supply remains stagnant, prices increase. This has played to the advantage of oil companies as no additional costs of production were incurred. So as prices increase and costs remain stable, all the additional rise in oil price is PROFIT. This is why Exxon was able to post record profits of $11.68 billion. So when prices were pushed from $100 a barrel to $120 a barrel that equated to nearly $20 a barrel PROFIT. So who is to blame for increasing oil prices? Legislation on regulation. AKA, the Democrats. This blew my mind when I realized that these profits were directly links to the Democrats. Of course then when they propose to punish oil companies for these profits.... I shake my head. More control, more power, please.... no more Democrat moves like these.