Quote - As has been recently demonstrated by Congress hauling up oil company executives to grill them over the price of gas at the pump.......when it's Congress that won't let the oil companies drill or build new refineries as they need to in order to increase domestic supplies

Not sure where you get this, Xeno. I can't claim to be up to the minute on everything that is going on, but the last I heard -- in spite of Democratic efforts to repeal them -- the tax breaks to encourage domestic production are still in place; also, last I heard, building new refineries at this time wouldn't be worthwhile from the point of view of the oil industry as the current refineries are not running at or near capacity.

Further, far from being victimized by Congress, the oil industry has been favored by Congress  more times than not -- just, for example, by the legislation that passed after Katrina to streamline government permits for refineries, limit the influence of citizen groups so that any oil company’s legal costs in the event of any lawsuit to challenge the location of any new refinery would have to be paid by such groups, win or lose, weaken environmental protections, and open federal lands for future refinery construction -- as well as offering subsidies to build refineries even though oil companies executives essentially said in response: "Thanks anyway, but regardless of such legislation, we don’t have any interest in building any new refineries in this country."

Have forgotten the name of the bill now, and I'm not sure if the Democrats have changed any of its provisions yet or not, but since Bush vetoes most everything they do, I kinda doubt it.

Anyway, am I misinformed, way behind, or just badly mistaken?