Oil touches record above $92

The United States announced Thursday new sanctions against Iran, targeting the elite Revolutionary Guards, which Washington accuses of supporting terrorism by backing Shiite militants in Iraq. Any confrontation between the world's largest oil consumer and its fourth largest oil producer has the potential to roil markets.

Here we go again and guess what? The average Joe has to pay more at the pump.

It's time to start acknowledging reality. Oil prices are never going back down, only way up. They may fluctuate a bit, but they will continue to rise. And the reason is mainly geological, not political--although political conflicts and the tendency of exporting countries to hoard supplies won't help matters.

profits.

In the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the Arab oil-producing countries (OPEC) imposed an embargo on supplies to the US on 20 October 1973.

For the wider world, oil prices went through the roof, from around $3 a barrel before the war to over $11 by early the following January.

The crisis led to a recession in 1975, the first of four world downturns where oil price increases caused by events in the Middle East played a key role.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/15/newsid_2559000/2559807.stm

Given that $90 a barrel is 30 times higher than £3 I think its safe to assume that the price of your fuel hasn't increased by the same amount unless it was only 10 cents a gallon at the pumps back then.