Why are Gas Prices so High?

A question that comes to my mind every time I stop at a station to gas up my car is why the hell are prices so high? Don't hand me that old supply and demand line because it seems to me that that's a little out of whack. Why just the other day I was on my way to work, late as usual, and even though running on empty I decided to wait until the afternoon and gas up after work. When I went to do so the price of gas had gone up ten cents a gallon. WTF! You mean to tell me that the gas that was in that tank somehow magically became more expensive in just a few hours? Isn't it the same gasoline that was selling for 10 cents less that morning? That just doesn't make sense to me. This article would imply that there is a great deal to the price of oil that is speculative. If that is so it would seem that our government could do something to lower the price. For that matter was the Iraq war supposed to provide us with a whole slew of oil? What is up with production there? It is lower than before the Invasion, can't we do something to help bring that up? I mean what good is it to be a capitalist imperial empire if we can't even run our occupied territories and exploit their resources? I mean c'mon for cryin out loud. If we could 'force' a little flooding of the market maybe the price would come down a bit. Of course that is only a short term solution. What we really need is to stop using as much oil, foreign and otherwise, as we can. This interesting solution is kind of cool. (Oops apparently a urban myth too. So much for my critical intellect.) I wonder why you don't see this all over the news? (Well it was on FOX but obviously their critical thinking is flawed anyway) Or how come our 'free market' hasn't made this readily available for the public? (I guess because it doesn't really work? Dang I hate it when the free market works the way it should :-) ! ) Could it be that our free market economy is truly only free for those who already have all the 'gold'? Something like this would probably cut into their profits eh? Ah now I am just being cynical. I really have to stop doing that.
Addendum:
Well the HHO thingy is a hoax, urban myth, whatever. Chemistry was never my strong subject. Anyway it doesn't change the fact that the amount of money the oil companies are making is so huge that they could cut the price of their product in half and still make an incredible profit. Since they have a monopoly on the product, for all intents and purposes, I think we (the government) should do something to force the cost down.