My buddy is in the Oil Extraction Biz - getting oil out of tricky wells.
He says the US has tons of oil, the problem has been that way long ago it was believed that Natural Gas, which is found with oil was bad and needed to be vented off first - what it really does is create pressure so you can lift the oil out of the wells.
Because American oil companies vented the gas there is tons of "unliftable" oil in the USA since there is no economic way of getting it up - its only new wells in new areas that work.
Just like in Canada, the tar sands could produce massive amounts of oil (we supply most of what the USA uses - it doesn't come from Saudi!) it only works at a certain price per barrel, under that price and its uneconomical.
High prices are because of speculation (derivatives) as well as demand - this may drop prices through perception - which is good.
I just hope it doesn't kill the charge to cleaner, temporarily more expensive alternatives