re: Gas has gone up almost 40 cents a gallon in the last few days

Oil companies used to respond to oil price increase by borrowing a ton of money and drilling like crazy, which increased production and brought the prices down. Wall Street pointed out that this boom bust cycle was not good for the bottom line and share prices. Just keep it steady and sell less oil at higher prices and produce a predictable revenue stream.

There are a couple of old timers in TX who are true wildcatters with big companies that they have kept private. They gambled by buying up leases and cranking up drilling before this latest increase hit (remember when oil futures went negative just a short time ago; they pounced) and are now multi billionaires. Texas Monthly had a good article about them.

maybe so, but that has little to do with the underlying global supply and demand problem