Is Big Oil raising gas prices artificially high to help Romney?
For quite awhile during the O admin., gas prices were around $3-3.50/gal but lately have shot up to $4 in my city. First of all, we're drilling all this oil on public land and it's not to create an energy independent America; our oil gets thrown into the international pool and sold on the international market. Neither O nor R$ spoke about this fact last night.
Second, it seems fishy that gas prices are suddenly shooting up right before the election, esp. an election that R$ is losing in the polls. And then R$ brings up gas prices in a conspicuous way last night. Or is it just a "coincidence?" 
Does anyone have info on the reason(s) for the price increase? I am hypothesizing that Big Oil is behind it, based on Big Oil's backing of R$.
= new reply since forum marked as read
CITGO is owned by Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., the national oil company of Venezuela.
It seems to me that in order to either help or hurt an incumbent President's reelection chances--which is the only time this scenario might make some sense--is if ALL the oil companies participated conspiratorially. Otherwise there would be wildly fluctuating prices from one brand to the next, no? Would the Venezuelan company go along with the scheme of their competitors in the U.S.?
Edit to add that Venezuela is a member of OPEC, which adds another twist.
