Quote: So you are telling me that demand has increased worldwide 300% since Clinton was in office, when it was relatively steady before that for a decade! HAHAHAH
Apparently you seriously need an economics lesson.
You see, price doesn't go up linearly with demand if supply is constant. If supply was just meeting demand before, and demand goes up even just 1%, suddenly everyone is faced with a shortage (albeit a small one) and so everyone tries to make sure that they get they're necessary amount, so they bid up the price they're willing to pay to make sure they get it.
It doesn't matter if think you demand for crude went up in the world, or demand for refined fuel went up in the US, the concept is exactly the same -- there's more demand for the product than the supply can meet. So what happens? The cost goes up until a point is found where it's so expensive that demand goes down enough to meet the available supply.
Does that mean that if the supply was short by 5% that the price would only go up 5%? Of course not. Would you cut out any gas usage if it went from $1.00 to $1.05? Nope. No one would. So the price would have to continue to go up until a price was reached where people cut 5% of their usage. And, yes, that could be a 300% increase in the price.
Is any of the that the reason why oil is so high? Yes, but there's also a lot of pure speculation. But that's beside the point. It's ignorant to believe that just because the price for crude oil has gone up some 300% that demand must have gone up something close to that.
