My car is a Diesel, so that's what I pay attention to. I think standard grade 87 octane gasoline is a little less than Diesel lately. Here near (not in) Chicago, I'm paying about $2.30-ish for a gallon. When I bought the car two years ago, it was always $1.60, give or take .10 - very constant because truckers can just wait another 100 miles or so to fill up if one area is very expensive. So those of us driving the 50+ mpg Diesel cars benefited from it.

Here in the US, we've had it so cheap for so long that few people worry about it. That's a waste, so many people driving much bigger cars than they need. I was in England in '92 and prices there were so much higher than I was used to - maybe three times the money (this was in Brighton, much less than London). I have to admit that I haven't followed the reasoning behind the price surge that closely, but there are a lot of recent (past couple years, anyway) events that apparently contribute to that. How close are we to running out of a supply of oil? Have all other petroleum based products like plastics gone up that much too? Natural gas here has gone up at a faster rate than gasoline or Diesel.

I can see how prices in England would be so much higher because it's imported. I was in Houston, Texas a year ago and it was a little less than here at the time - home to lots of oil production and refining. But not that much different.