My father used to own a service station. Gas companies used to be proud of their fuel, and competed to offer good quality gasoline and offered incentives to people to buy it. Remember when they gave away things when you filled up? I remember one promotion whereby the attendants cleaned the interior of any car that got a "fill up". (I know, I'm dating myself here...)

Nowadays, the prevailing oil company attitude is

"You're lucky we are selling it to you at all, even at 4 bucks a gallon, so take what you can get and shut up!"
"If you keep b**tching, we'll just do another contrived shortage to shake you up!"

AV8TOR