JtS, if you'd been paying 2 dollars a gallon for "gas" for the last 20 years you would have paid for a nation-wide free health service; you would have paid for your new schools, bridges and roads.

The whingers in the US who complain about fuel prices should get it into their thick heads that you have been given cheap "gas" for far, far too long - You are picking up the tab now - join the rest of us in the real world. The rise in the price of oil per barrel has got absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Iraq or Afghanistan, I mean how could it the latter does not export any and the former's has supposedly been under embargo and sanctions since 1990, and even when it did export oil it was ranked 17th in the order of oil exporting countries.

Factors affecting the rise in the price of oil per barrel:
- Increased demand world-wide but especially from countries such as India and China.
- Lack of refining capacity world-wide
- Lack of resources to bring new developments on-stream quick enough
- Political uncertainty particularly in Nigeria, Russia and Venezuela as major suppliers.