Would it be wrong to say that the U.S recieve cheaper oil than other countries and that they don't pay World Market Price? Can someone from America explain how fuel prices have changed? What sort of money would the U.S be paying for Iraqi Crude? It wouldn't be what evryone else is paying

What's everyone else paying? I think we're paying over $60 a barrel these days.

Also, here in Michigan, we're paying about $2.59 a gallon.

like he said we pay the world price our refining capabilities are better than some.

The US quite basically pays the full sum according to the fluctuations of your NYMEX trading market, which is, the world's market price. Your economy is a free type, so you guys will have to bear the brunt of your own demands. If demand goes up with supplies being choked, prices go up. If demand slows down, price would remain either the same or dwindle down. If stockpiles increase, price also goes down because supply goes up to ease on the demands. I will not consider here whether if the US has in the past few months somehow rigged the figures of their crude stocks to boost their nation's economic confidence amidst the mess and/or to keep the price at a more stabilize manner while finding ways and means to solve their problems.

The US of course uses its dollars to pay for Iraqi crude. Before the invasion under Saddam, should the US would want to purchase their oil, they would have to do it in Euros instead because that Super-Mario demanded it to be that way. Some can argue with full evidence that this was actually the main reason why they had to invade Iraq and not for terrorism or democracy or WMD of any sort. But we'll discuss this some other time and place. The USD is used for transactions now in Iraq.

One situation of a country getting cheaper oil than most of the rest would be in my country, Malaysia. The government heavily subsidizes our petrol price at three times the normal rate we should be paying (should my country's oil market be allowed to fluctuate like in the US), and the recent rise of world oil prices (at above $60) have put a big slap into my government's way of handling it (by recent increase of price of petrol of 30 cents per litre after several increases). Any further rise in oil price to say $70-80 could spark a massive letting-off of this burden and thrown to the people instead. We certainly would want to avoid that of course.

The price of oil is the same for EVERYONE...some countries just tax more than others....see UK for example

That is inaccurate speaker. Maybe for your region, but not mine. Several countries here subsidizes or cuts the oil price down for sale in their nations, example like my country because we have other outside investors coming in to take charge of our oilfields (Shell, BP, etc). Some countries of course do tax more and even rises as the price does too, but it's entirely a different way round for some other countries. This is one problem because if the price sustains for a longer period of time or booms higher, these nations would have big problems as to how much they have to cut down the subsidies and how the people here would react to the change. Example, the people in Malaysia. They don't understand that high oil prices are driving everything up, from households to stations to the services, and they quickly point to the government as corrupt and useless for letting the oil price surge higher recently. I'm not saying that the government is not (for they are terribly too), but the people are spoilt and ignorant, so instead of waking up and face the real world, they chose to sit down and cry like a baby.

People are finally realizing that we really can run out of oil. After hurricane Katrina, we were with gas for a while. Unfortunally this realization could raise gas prices by a lot. I'm switching to alternitive fuel.