Maybe the refiners are purposely holding back production(under-producing). The electric utilities held back power production during the not too long ago energy crisis in california in order to spike prices.
I remember everyone denying this at the time. Primarily they said it was because no new power plants had been built recently so demand suddenly outgrew supply. However I remember the times or the journal showed a graph of power consumption versus production capacity over a long period of time and there was really no supply shortages due to production capacity. It had to be something else, which later became more apparent as the ENRON tapes were released of the traders actually manipulating supply by turning on and off power plants.
It seems earily similar to now, just switch the commodity from electricty to oil. Remeber there are few players in both businesses.