Here's something I don't get.I don't get why if, as the five oil company executives told a Senate panel the other day, the price of crude oil is set in the free market by "willing sellers and willing buyers," the big oil companies still ended up with a record $33 billion in profits in the last quarter.

Let's break this down.

If the willing sellers had a reduced supply of crude oil to sell to the willing buyers, namely ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, BPAmerica and Royal Dutch Shell, then, free markets being what they are, the willing sellers would, as sure as the New Year follows Christmas, jack up the price of their reduced supply of crude.

Don't know much about economics, but supply and demand is not quantum mechanics.

Now the aforementioned big oil companies know that no matter how high the price of gasoline (or natural gas for heating) goes, the ever-gas guzzling American public (we'd drink the stuff over ice with a twist if it tasted better) will pay it, lest our Humvees and SUVs sit idle.

They pay more, we pay more. It's the nature of the beast. I can accept that.

But what I don't get, and have yet to hear anyone explain, is this: If the big oil companies are paying more for the crude oil they refine, should not the extra revenue they receive from us, their willing (or is it addicted) gas consumers, work out to be a wash?

You see where I'm going here? Where did the windfall come in? It couldn't have gone to the crude sellers because, thanks

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to Katrina they were allegedly selling less crude, right?

OK, I admit, economics was never one of my strong subjects, but employing what my father used to call "plain old common sense," there are a few possibilities to account for the ExxonMobil's, ConocoPhillips', BPAmerica's and Shell Oil's, really terrific third quarters.

1. It was an honest mistake. Somebody in the accounting department put a decimal point in the wrong place in the price increase notification. Result: an inadvertent $10 billion overcharge.

2. They charged us a little more for their gasoline than was actually justified by the increased price of the crude oil as a hedge against future hurricanes and rumors that car makers were about to get serious on fuel economy.

3. They cut back on refining capability after Hurricane Katrina because they didn't want to disappoint the cable TV pundits who predicted over and over that damage to the southern refineries would severely reduce capacity, raising gasoline prices.

4. They are lying through their highly refined teeth.

Lee R. Raymond, CEO of ExxonMobil, really boiled it down (not a bad idea when addressing U.S. senators), saying the oil profits are so huge because the oil industry is so huge.

Not that the senators were any great shakers in getting the five CEOs to fess up. A few of them used the occasion to grandstand for their constituencies. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., dragged out the charts and graphs to complain about how much the CEOs are paid. What that had to do with the price of 87 octane at the pump is not entirely clear.

Our own Sen. Joe Lieberman may have thrown the biggest scare into the execs by saying he'd introduce new fuel efficiency laws.

Feeling the heat of the consumers, the oil companies have responded by taking out full-page newspaper ads urging drivers to conserve fuel by, yes, driving less.

If he big oil companies really cared about conserving fuel, something that will happen one day when the world starts to run out of places to drill for fossil fuel, they'd have found a way to make hydrogen fuel work years ago.

Meanwhile, the rest of us can speculate when the next natural or manmade disaster will provide the excuse to kick the price of gasoline over the $4 per gallon mark. As they say with the next terror attack, it's not if, it's when.

Charles Walsh's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You can reach him by phone at 330-6217 or by e-mail at cwalsh@ctpost.com.