Great post Flinger!!! I agree. I had the same debate with a co-worker. He was saying that the oil companies were gouging us. I asked him if he had an oil well in his back yard, what would he sell his oil for? The market price was his answer. Well, there you go, the market sets the price. The market is NOT the oil companies, they are only producers, the market is ultimately the consumer, and when the consumer is willing to pay high prices for oil, the oil companies are more than happy to sell it to them for that price.
There’s alot of talk about needing to conserve oil here in the US. One problem now is that even if we cut our consumption here in the states, other developing countries are thirsty for oil, which I’d guess will keep the price up. The one good thing that will probably come out of this though is it might change our energy consuming ways a bit, but I wouldn’t equate cutting our consumption to a drop in the world price of oil.
