While true that demand and production issues did cause some of the problem, many of us believed that it was due to rampant speculation brought about by republicans when they snuck the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 into a 11,000 page budget bill which was one of the last bills signed by outgoing president Bill Clinton in Dec 2000.
And who was responsible for that wonderfull bill? Such wonderful patriots as Phil Gramm (who also helped repeal the depression era Glass-Steagall Act which allowed all the banks etc. to take on that toxic debt that has caused the current woes), Ken Lay who used it to basically fuck California and eventually his own company (Enron).. Tom DeLay's wife was paid 200k to try and push the bill thru.... Oh.. Enron lobbyists helped draft the bill by the way..
Don't believe me? The bill that finally closed the "Enron loophole" that was in that Act was signed on June 18, 2008.. Note that Bush vetoed the bill but congress and the senate pushed it thru... Here's a graph of oil prices...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pr...2003-2008).png
Big surprise there was no big news about this..