Actually, higher gas prices can easily result in less bottom line profit for a "gas station". The reality in this business is that the gas pumps only serve to get customers onto your property. You then make your profit from sales of other things - in your food/convenience store or service bays primarily. Company owned locations don't tend to do well with their food/convenience items (dedicated food/convenience chains that also have gas beat them out handily) and company-owned serfvice bays have been losing market share for many many years vs dedicated service providers. So, with more pressure on consumers due to higher gas prices, they are more discriminating in terms of "bargain shopping". Gas companies don't undercut the competition on gas price per their distribution agreements so unless their stores offer some sort of added value customers tend to go to their competition.
Valero wised up some time ago and upgraded their stores to compete with the food/convenience chains, hence why they are doing well. Exxon simply has dropped the ball in that regard.
Yep. Even if they have large format c-stores with a range of ancillary profit centers like carwash the "majors" (major integrated oil companies -- the "brands") find retail to not be profitable enough, since company operations tend to be less efficient than dedicated retailer/marketer competitors and less profitable by far than upstream exploration and production. Worth more trouble than it returns, generally.
There have been cycles of direct involvement at retail among the majors over the past 80 years or so and retail is definitely not a priority today. Will that change again down the road, perhaps. However, even at its more recent peaks, the percentage of company ops has been fairly small with most stations owned and supplied by independent retailers and marketers.
As for profits, net retail margin on a gallon of $4 gas is about 3 cents, give or take a few cents here or there depending upon market conditions. And give or take could be 1 cent, breaking even or losing money here or there for a few days in high volatility markets. If the station owner is really "gouging" he might get a dime. But it's hard to gouge, since it's the only industry that posts the price of its major volume product in huge letters on the street corner for all to comparison shop.
The credit card companies usually make more on a gallon of gas than the station owners.
