Why are refiners' profits so high and can anything bring down gas prices?

See Oil Refiners an Easy, but Odd, Target for Pump-Price Surge: Refiners are being blamed for surging fuel prices. While they are logging bumper profits, that tends to be the exception, not the rule by Jinjoo Lee of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"High natural-gas prices are likely fueling the problem. Because the petroleum-product market is a global one, record natural-gas prices in Europe (they are more than four times where they were a year ago) mean costs at European refineries are much higher, contributing to higher prices. Refineries are energy intensive and use natural gas to power their boilers and as a source of hydrogen to lower the sulfur content of diesel fuel. High natural-gas prices in Europe “makes the cost curve steeper for everybody,” notes Matthew Blair, equity analyst at Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.

But refiners’ impressive profits today are an exception, not the rule. The WTI 3:2:1 crack spread, a measure that tracks the difference between the purchase price of crude oil and the selling price of finished products, is at more than $53 a barrel. Over the past 15 years, that difference was a less-appetizing $16 a barrel, on average. Operating margins at U.S. independent refiners are far closer to that of grocery stores than that of oil producers.

Moreover, refineries are expensive investments that require strong long-term signals. For a long time, those signals just haven’t been there. U.S. demand for finished petroleum products increased at a compound annual growth rate of less than 0.4% in the decade leading up to 2019, according to EIA data.

Is there anything that can be done to bring prices down in the short term? Restarting idled capacity won’t be cheap or quick. Philip Verleger, energy economist, wrote in a recent report that restarting a refinery is a careful process that takes months, sometimes more than a year. Some moves might help bring gasoline prices down a bit, but they are likely in the order of a “few nickels here and there,” notes Mr. Blair.

Measures that actually could bring fuel prices down a bit in the short run pit the fuel industry against other influential industry groups, making them less politically palatable. These include suspending the Jones Act, a move that would make it cheaper for fuel cargo to travel between U.S. ports but would face opposition from the shipping industry. Relaxing renewable-fuel standards, which create compliance costs for refiners, is another option but would be deeply unpopular with ethanol lobbyists and farm-state politicians. Banning product exports might provide some relief but will likely come at a hefty geopolitical cost."