Black Gold

Unless you've been getting around town on a broom, you've probably noticed that gas prices have jumped. I have. For the first time in ages I broke $20 filling up my little 13 gallon tank?and it wasn't even empty. (Cue eerie organ sounds here.)

Prices are up an average of 11 cents per gallon over the past two weeks. A source in this CNN article says the two main reasons are an "oil shortage caused by Venezuela's general strike and international preparations for a possible war in Iraq."

Easy to forget it, but we get slightly more oil from South America than we do from the Middle East. At least we did last year at this time, when we ran a Data item in the magazine detailing U.S. sources of oil, asking the question, "Can we do without Saudi oil?" Seems like a good time to run it again.