Oil speculation is betting on future price based on supply and demand. The commodities are all the same and oil is now bought and sold as "value" like gold or copper. The US is a major consumer of oil but our consumption up and down doesn't impact the market price as much as our economy does. If the market fears the US economy will go down then the price of oil will go down because we are a consumer nation that buys the stuff other countries want to sell to us. Much of the market price is based on the value of the dollar and that relates to our import export trade deficit... so if we import more stuff than we export our dollar becomes worth less... we buy more oil from outside of the US and the dollar is worth less. We import $700 billion in oil every year, a little less this year because of the pain at the pump. But if the economy stays strong prices stay high because the consumption continues to rise in India and China... China will have more cars than the US in 18 years and that's up from three cars two decades ago.

Most of our exported oil dollars go to Canada, Mexico and Venezuela with the remaining going to the Mid East. Europe has not seen the rise in energy prices we have because their money continues to out pace our money.

To fix the problem of the dollar we need to have free trade agreements so we export more stuff. We need to produce domestic energy so we make American oil companies rich in stead of Canada, Mexico and Venezuela and the Mid East. Americans needs to save money and Americans need to be the ones buying American debt in stead of folks from China and the Mid East.