"We", as in North Americans, don't get much of our oil from the middle east. We get the majority of our oil from Canada, Mexico, and various South American countries.

However, we pay world price because the oil that we get from those sources can be sent elsewhere. If the middle east shut down, the Euros would buy from "our" suppliers.

Much of Canada's oil (I'm thinking of the Alberta tar sands) hasn't historically been economical to produce, because it's harder to get out of the ground and refine. In the Middle East, by contrast, they dig a hole and it comes bubbling out like in the Beverly Hillbillies. (One interesting consequence of that is that petroleum economics haven't been widely practiced in the Middle East.) Anyway, with the price of oil having gone up so much there is now huge investment going on in northern Alberta to develop this stuff.

See the Dilbert toon on fungibility:http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2006-02-19/

That is the most retarded use of flash ever.

Agree, but the old site is inaccessible.