This is one of those things where it's easy to get fixated on one aspect and ignore everything else. There are many factors that go into the price of oil. Most of the following comes from the CIA World Factbook.

1. Supply and demand are very tight. The world produces and consumes a little over 80 million barrels of oil per day.
2. Some of the major producers--Nigeria, for example--are politically unstable.
3. We have already used a great deal of the most accessible and cheapest oil. Canada is a great example of this. Most of Saudi Arabia's oil costs something like $5-7/barrel to produce. Most of Canada's costs about $25-30/barrel. Only in the last few years have certain large deposits become economical to put into production.
4. Demand for oil has increased greatly in the last few years. Admittedly, American SUV's play a role, but a comparatively small one. China now has the second largest economy in the world, and it is growing at 9.3% each year. China now consumes about 6.4 million barrels of oil each day. India has the fourth largest economy, growing at 7.6% per year, and currently consumes about 2.3 million barrels per day.
5. The president of Iran. The price of oil spikes every time he opens his mouth. He has threatened to wipe out Israel. He has threatened to stop exporting oil. He has also threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, which he could probably do temporarily. Remember how gas prices spiked after Hurricane Katrina? Katrina took 1.5 million barrels of oil per day off the world market. Iran exports 2.5 million barrels per day. It gets even better. Oil from Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE, Iraq, Iran, AND Saudi Arabia goes through the Strait of Hormuz.
6. There are exactly two ways of dealing with a situation in which demand exeeds supply--rising prices, and shortages. Which would you rather have--all the gas you can afford at $5/gallon, or 0 gallons available at $2/gallon?
7. The goverment. Gas station owners make perhaps 3 cents on a gallon of gas. Oil companies make about 10 cents. In contrast, the nationwide average for combined federal and state taxes is about 46 cents per gallon. In Europe, taxes are much, much higher and are almost entirely to blame for the diffence in price between Europe and the US.

In other words, the reason for high gas prices is much more complex than a lot of people realize.