Price of Oil

I have been enjoying the reduction in traffic since gas prices have gotten so high, but I was reading some flapper doodle on the net today and it got me to thinking. Why have gas prices gone up so much? Because the price of oil has gone up, silly. But why has the price of oil shot up so much so fast? Is it because demand has gone up so much, or is it that demand is running just a little ahead of supply? According to Aramco World, Saudi Arabia is the one country that can easily increase production to meet increased demand. Could it be that they are holding down production to force prices higher? Why would they do that? Well, more money in their pocket, and more money in every other oil producing nations pocket as well. I mean that was the whole point of OPEC in the beginning. Now Saudi Arabia is supposedly an ally of the United States. We sell them boatloads of military hardware, and they send back a portion of the money we send them for oil. The current administration is a friend to big business, so I would not be surprised if good ol' Dubya asked them to hold down production to push up prices, so his buddies in the oil business could make a few quick bucks before Dubya loses his kingly position. I supposed the Saudi's could have done this on their own, but that wouldn't make much of a conspiracy theory would it? And then what would we talk about?