You have to realize that the oil market is a speculative trading market, just like other commodities. When "bad news" hits, it's not an isolated situation. The speculators are laying in their bets, on how the world-wide market will react. They make their money on MOVEMENT in the market, NOT on consistency. A "flat market" leaves very little room for speculative investment profit.
The price at the pump is also a "speculative investment market", when the opportunity presents itself. Diesel at the pump here has been around $5.00 - $5.20 for a couple weeks. But I went through a small town with a small local C store on Sunday, ...they don't move much fuel at all... and they had it selling for $4.19, with gas marked on their pump pretty close to that... I'm sure that THEY had just filled up their diesel tanks earlier, and had taken a recent fill of newer, higher priced gas from the fuel jobber. And they were selling it based on what they had to pay for the fuel. The jobber that supplies them may have filled HIS tanks prior to the price increases from the pipeline (who is also taking advantage of the situation when they can), so he might have some lower priced diesel in his storage tanks, but the cost to replace it will be higher, so he charges the higher price as he pulls out of that storage tank, and "makes a nice profit" on his investment in storage. They generally charge, mostly based on what the market price is that day... not on what they paid to fill their storage tanks. If they bought on the high, they'll be more reluctant to narrow their margin though, until they get that higher priced fuel gone out of their storage tanks, for sure. But market pressure/competition might FORCE them to lower their price (and thus their margin), eventually.
It's no different for us, with beef. We decide somewhat on when to market our animals, depending on what the market is doing at the time, and what we THINK it will do going forward. We don't market it cheaper than the market, just because we happened to buy in our inventory of cattle "when it was cheap".
It's not "gouging", it's business, and investment.
