I'm sure people have stumbled across the case of Stanley Meyer, which rings to me as the smoking gun when 'big oil' decided to pursue 'alternative energy solidarity.' It's a conspiracy in the literal sense, since they conspired to keep people from outside the 'group' from establishing alternative energy competition as long as it took to get the players into place, which you referred to in your last sentence.

Since all the companies pretty much run the establishment with fiscal reserves, kinda feels like it's reverse-communism, where the companies are the government instead of being state sponsored. Curious thought, but maybe it's just my intoxicated mind.