As long as every quarter is a new profit record the majors can claim anything they want, most of the public will not believe them.  Their paid-for members of Congress should have no trouble shielding them, though.

Here's an article from Slate on who to blame:

When gasoline prices spike, the public and politicians tend to vent their anger at the two most obvious sources: 1) local gas stations, where people have to pay $60 to fill up their SUVs, and 2) the companies and countries sitting on giant pools of crude oil, like ExxonMobil and Saudi Arabia.

But those who are making the biggest profits in the oil business post-Katrina aren't facing public wrath at all. In fact, they've been receiving sympathy and various forms of government aid, even though they're doing better than anyone. For the refiners, long the overlooked middle child of the oil business, good times just got better.

The article goes on to say that refineries have been making $10/barrel this year (i.e. the price for a barrel of gas minutes the price for a barrel of crude), which is already a historical high; but estimates are that post-Katrina this spread has increased to $40/barrel, leading to unprecedented high profits.

If it's any consolation to our "oil company insider", there are plenty of independent refiners, like Valero, whose stock is up 226 percent in the past year. Maybe we can agree to point fingers at the independent refineries without hurting the feelings of the "insider".

High oil prices are a function of supply and demand. Supply of oil is constrained by geology, NOT by oil companies. In a system of competitive capitalism, it's in the interest of any individual oil company to pump as much as possible. For the oil companies to be blame-worthy, there would have to be some kind of worldwide conspiracy between scores of state-owned and publicly traded oil companies to keep supply low, which is a virtual impossibility because there's too much of a temptation to cheat once the price gets this high. (OPEC is the closest thing you have to cooperation designed to manipulate prices, and just within that group alone you had rampant cheating on quotas. And that was before they agreed to open the taps full throttle.) The oil companies around the world are pumping as much as they can.

So that leaves the demand side. People who use the most oil or gasoline are the ones who are likely to be the most upset by high prices, and the ones who, if they want someone to blame, most ought to look in the mirror.

Not positive this is related, but I wondered if anybody else had seen this:

NEW YORK, Sept 26 (Reuters) - New Jersey Acting Gov. Richard Codey on Monday said he had sued Motiva Shell, Amerada Hess AHC (AHC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Sunoco (SUN.N: Quote, Profile, Research) for overpricing gasoline after Hurricane Katrina shut much of the U.S. Gulf Coast's oil production and damaged refineries.

"We will not allow businesses to exploit natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina by inflating prices at the pump in violation of New Jersey's laws," New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey said in a statement.