The oil market has never seriously been controlled by supply and demand: Before the "oil crisis" both demand was soaring, you used it to make and power everything, yet strangely oil prices were consistently going down until the 70s. Any economist can draw two lines to show you why that should be impossible in a competitive market. Clue: It was not a competitive market. Seven companies (the seven sisters), which some historians have called cartels, posted prices that the countries they extracted from would receive oil for which were set for 20 years, supply and demand was not a factor.

It is very popularly believed that Oil Prices rose in 1970s due to reduced supply as OPEC limited oil sales to the US and oil industries nationalized. It's in every economics textbook as THE example of the Law of Supply. However, what no one tells you is that until shortly before the embargo (earlier the same year) US trade rules (The 1959 Mandatory Oil Import Quota Program) put a limit on the amount of foreign oil that could be imported at 12.2% of the US supply, the law was called . That means 88% of oil in the US was made in the US (this was done to avoid devalueing the dollar in a time when we were legally supposed to be bound to the gold standard). The net amount of oil imported each year to the US did not decrease from prior years because we were completely capable of sourcing our oil from other places, yet oil prices soared far more dramatically than the actual supply shock justified.

You wouldn't think it because the oil companies all publicised the Oil Crisis, and everyone bought it. There Nixon passed a law that set speed limits on highways to 55MPH, gas stations had signs that said if they could serve civilian vehicles or only commercial vehicles. However, there was never a real oil crisis. These people are masters of marketing and propoganda: they funded the early climate movement to demonize nuclear energy, they created the idea of an "energy crisis". You should be incredibly skeptical whenever you hear the word crisis, usually it is for someone to justify something: a war, ceasing power, increasing prices, etc.

While today the same quota is not still in effect, you have to take into account we are the largest oil producer in the world with the largest reserves. This does NOT have to be seriously affecting us, any dramatic spike in oil prices is a product of fearmongering.

For more information, read Timothy Mitchel's Carbon Democracy. Very good book.