Below is a chart from the American Petroleum Institute showing gasoline taxes acoss the country.
Oil companies produce a product. They employ people in the production of that product. What oil product does the government produce? It would be interesting to compare what the oil companies make on a gallon of gasoline versus what the government makes on a gallon of gas. 
Upon stumbling across a link for this blog on Facebook, I became curious about profits vs taxes as mentioned above. A Google search led me to many other blogs claiming anywhere from .02 cents to .07 cents per gallon profit.
This figure (as it turns out) vastly understates profits. It is a figure for refined oil only, if you were to include the price of crude oil, that number increases significantly.
Below I will include a link from a reputable source, Factcheck.org:
http://www.factcheck.org/2011/05/playing-politics-with-gasoline-prices/
The point is not how much the oil companies make–they do the exploration, employ the workers, etc. They earn their money. What gives the government the right to make that much from a product they have nothing to do with the production of?