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Because gasoline is a commodity, not a necessary resource, although we've come to treat it as such. The world got along for millions of years without the use of crude. Once its properties were discovered, we made it an evil necessity to life.
My statement that it's a speculative market markup is not my opinion, it's said almost daily on the news business report I listen to every morning. While there are addons (taxes, etc.,) and the so-called devalued dollar, everything that has risen in price the last three years is attributed to the price of fuel and nothing else. The cycle becomes vicious-oil prices go up, raising fuel prices which raises distribution costs which are passed thru in product pricing which devalues our spending dollar.
"They" have been saying for decades that we will run out in X years and we haven't. Because we haven't, technology is slow to come up with alternative fuel sources for the masses. Bio-Diesel, Ethanol, Methane based fuels barely touch the surface and more can be done to utilize these and others. Ironically, there are pessimistic reports that state the production of ethanol is a contributing factor to the rise in starvation rates in third world countries. I'm not sure I'm buying that one yet....
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