My view on the failure of the government to act on oil prices for a year and a half? The string of magnificently ordinary party hacks to lead various critical agencies? The continuing corruption within agencies that the White House refuses to investigate, The War in Iraq that has no articulated purpose from the White House.

Men are from Mars
Women are from Venus
Bush is from a planet to be named later......

Christ, and I'm to the Right of the late General Patton, what do the rest of the people think? Nobody in the White House thought to jaw bone these oil barons to lower their profits from $33 BILLION IN A SINGLE QAUARTER to something like $8 billion, or three billion? After all, that is money that is coming from us.

But it isn't that much money saved. We use three and a half billion gallons per day. Spread over 90 days that comes to 315 billion gallons. If we got $20 billion in profits back we could only save 6.25 cents per gallon, but it might be a start, Bush could have given it a shot. He could have pushed conservation. Him? Conservation? Get back to you on that......

From DOE: (Italics mine)
The price of Crude is up - as high as $70 per barrel.
This is because worldwide supply is tight and 1) gasoline demand in the US is up despite high prices - 4.3% more than 2003. Americans simply refuse to conserve. This is not trivial considering that the US, with 5% of the world's population, consumes 45% of the gasoline produced on earth. 2) Gasoline demand is surging in China, where crude oil imports increased 30% in 2003.