Sorry Mantus, this isn't all about the middle east. We buy the majority of our oil from Canada and Mexico, then sell most of what we produce elsewhere and unfortunately this has just been a long time coming. Europe and Canada have been paying $6-$8 a gallon for years
This is all political bullshit thanks to the assholes we elect and their masters in the energy industry. We've had the technology and the ability to produce Hydrogen engines since the 50's. But guess who bought all the patents, yep, oil companies. We could also be producing and buying much more efficient vehicles, but the EPA won't let them in the country. Chrysler's been producing 30mgp SUV's for a couple of years now for sale in Europe, but not here. The top 15 in Europe make the US look pathetic.
This list is 2 years old:
REPORT: All of Europe's 15 most fuel-efficient cars get better than 56 mpg — Autoblog
Recently I've seen a number of 75mpg + vehicles available, just not for us. What's available to us in these ranges are Hybrids. Great concept, poor implementation and very expensive. Sadly, we're hardly even in the game with only a couple of American made cars even on the list of what we can get n this arena.
2011 Best and Worst MPG Cars
The bottom line is, we will suffer this until we separate business and government.