New York Times: “No industrialized economy is as reliant on oil, or as obsessed with gasoline prices, as the United States, the world’s biggest consumer of oil. But the oil market is largely immune to Washington’s machinations, and prices have more than quadrupled over the last six years for reasons that are increasingly disconnected from what happens in the United States.

The reality is that oil is a globally traded commodity, and Americans must pay international prices to get their share. And those prices reflect the fact that global supplies are stretched and struggling to meet a booming demand that is being driven by growth in developing countries, notably China and India. This has left the world with a very slim cushion of extra production.”

Testimony of Lucian Pugliaresi, President, Energy Policy Research Foundation, Inc., Before the Task Force on Competition Policy and Antitrust of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Judiciary
Hearing on Retail Gasoline Prices, May 7, 2008: “Certainly, we would have expected oil prices to rise in response to demand growth and rising costs of new supplies, but current price increases reflect a failure of the world petroleum market to deliver new supplies from
fields that could easily do so within the current (or even a lower ) price structure. U.S. policies that have restricted opportunities to expand conventional supplies from Alaska, and prospective offshore and onshore provinces in the lower 48 have contributed to this high price environment along with civil strife in Nigeria, delays in new OPEC capacity, and resource nationalism in Venezuela.”