We've seen a marked increase in oil price volatility. The lows are lower, the highs are higher, but I'm not so sure that structurally things have changed so much.
Fundamentally, the prices don't belong at these (mid-20s) levels. This is a $20 a barrel market. The rest is speculative fluff.
They live in the real world, too. I don't think there was any attempt to maximize the reported (profit) numbers.
Chavez is a hawk on oil prices and always has been. His hold on power is getting increasingly tenuous. This is very negative for intermediate oil prices -- OPEC could lose its principal hawk.