This is what unbridled capitalism and profit seeking gets us

They have production capacity already and they refuse to use it

Not drilling and not refining let's them jack up prices while blaming inflation

At a macro level yes, if everyone increases supply 10% you'll see some price fluctuation, but that doesn't necessarily hold for an individual, self-interested company. Hell, that company could produce 10% more but sell it for $y-0.05 and presumably make more money selling for cheaper.

Of course there are non gasoline car uses for oil, and those are worth investing in, but there is much less of them.

You’re suggesting they are refusing to increase production out of greed, but the greedy move would be to expand drilling and refinement to capture more of the high margin volume. Preventing this defector behavior requires an explicit cartel (see OPEC), which is not legal in the US.

So your explanation for why oil companies don’t increase production is lacking.

How does your stance make sense at all? In what market does increasing supply not lead to decreasing prices?

Of course they're going to keep restricting supply to keep prices high while they can. What I don't understand is why you're here defending them without listening to the earning calls where they literally state what I am telling you

It’s super basic economics unless you control 100% of the market.

An oil provider that doubles their output from 1% of the market to 2% will only put a slight downward pressure on the price while doubling their high margin income.

The winning move is always to increase production.

> without listening to the earning calls where they literally state what I am telling you

I’m telling you that you don’t understand what they are saying. If they are unwilling to build it’s because the future of the oil is uncertain, not because the margins are high right now. The margins being high is a great reason to expand drilling even into hard to extract areas.

They don't need to build anything

They already have capacity, they have the distilleries and holding already built but sitting entirely unused, they just aren't spinning it up to purposely restrict supply and keep profit margins high. That's what we get with an oligarchy, the companies work together to control production and price.

The math is is a simple as, “why make a billion on a 500 mill investment when you can make 2 billion on 1.1 mill”? You’re suggesting they are both incompetent and not greedy, which can’t possibly be true of all of them.