You can extract hydrogen from sea water right now. The problem is the amount of energy you need to seperate the hydrogen and oxygen atoms making up the water is more than you get back as heat when you recombine the resulting products by combustion.
The problem with gas prices is easy too. As long as you choose to consume something, gas, oil, guitar strings, whatever, and you do not produce it yourself, you either have to pay the producer what they want or do without.
Sure, it is commendable to conserve, but even if you reduce demand for a product, say, oil, by 20% and you do not produce it yourself, the producers can then just raise the price of the remaining 80% to make up revenue lost to the "loss of demand."
MarkS