I live in a refining town and have several friends who have worked for the oil companies all their life. It used to be a great opportunity, but not so good now. Anyway, one of the problems with U.S. gas production is that they produce about 35 different gasoline formulas. This is because many states, notably California, have certain requirements for additives to control emissions. Also, there are different fuel formulas produced for winter use. The refineries have to flush the systems out between different batches of the different blends. Seems to me that if every state got on the same sheet of music, we could reduce the number of blends produced and reduce production costs.
Having said this, the production costs are not as high as the oil companies claim, they are making huge windfall profits, yet they won't give corresponding pay raises to the employees. In fact, they are trying to cut costs by cutting overtime (formerly the employees gold mine, and a legitimate one at that), job positions (they sometimes don't re-hire when someone leaves - my friends are having to do the work formerly done by two or more), and some benefits. Granted, the refineries here are about to embark on a huge expansion project which will be very expensive, but come on, they can pay their employees a little more (spread the wealth) and reduce the gas prices more than they have.