The day I wrote this, the standard-bearers of the American oil industry strode into a Senate committee chamber to face the American people and justify their "outrageous profits." Their inquisitors asked why they were not drilling enough to supply the U.S., and why very high gasoline prices could not be stopped, with high heating bills to come. It's a volatile mix, much like throwing gasoline on a fire. Thanks to all the TV cameras present, the political posturing in the room far outweighed anything the executives of ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips had to say. A couple of weeks before this hearing, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released its latest study of the public's views of the federal government, the media, the Republican and Democratic parties, the Department of Defense and other major U.S. institutions. Some 2,006 adults were polled in October. Only 20% of these people said they had a favorable view of oil companies-down from 32% in 2001. Well. If oil and gas demand is higher for longer, and prices are too, then what is the public to do? Look at the outcry from Main Street, Congress and the media just because the price of gasoline was a startling 38 cents per gallon higher in November than it was the same month a year earlier! A supposedly free-market-loving Congress will try to placate a spoiled and uninformed public that decries oil profits, but ignores the much higher profits at Citicorp and other huge investment banks. For more on this, see the December issue of Oil and Gas Investor. For a subscription, call 713-993-9320, ext. 126.