I don't know about your area but here in Michigan we're still at $2 a gallon. My friends in Austin, Texas say gas there is $1.35 a gallon. Is it fair to assume that middlemen are making obscene profits or am I wrong?
Here in Texas, it's 20 cents state tax + 18.4 cents federal tax
Distribution ranges from 20 cents/gallon to well over 2 dollars to far-flung places, this is the explanation behind most regional variance in price, they run pretty lean, maybe cost + 5-7%. (It's a volume play.)
So 17 cents crude + 30 cents refining + 38 cents taxes + say 25 cents distribution to Austin gets you to $1.10 and the rest is margin, minus marketing and operating the retail location and you get net profit, typically in the 8-12 cent per gallon range.
When oil prices rise, the refiners usually extract most of the profit at the point of sale to distributors / retail.
Gasoline is profitable but distributed throughout the value chain.