the price of oil is affected by supply and demand but not totally. It often operates outside of supply and demand as it is right now. Gasoline usage has dropped one per cent per week for four weeks in a row yet the price of oil continues to go up. There are many complicating factors that contribute to the price of oil, political climate, terrorism and civil war in oil producing countries, interest rate cuts by the federal reserve which lower the value of the dollar which results in investors investing in commodities such as oil and gold and wheat instead of the dollar which raises the price of those commodities, the lower value of the dollar also leads to having to spend more dollars to get the same product. Speculation also raises prices, sometimes dramatically and last but not least market manipulation and greed. In the long run we have to turn to other sources of energy, such as hydrogen, wind, solar, waves. The big boys are getting into the action now, such as GE has recently announced that they want to work with utilities to develop cheap plentiful energy. They say the technology is there but has to be developed and applied on a larger scale. One of the problems here is that whatever is proposed, for instance here on long island, windmills, natural gas pipelines, natural gas storage is opposed by someone because they dont want to have to look at it.