Oil was going up before Tunisia. All commodities have been going parabolic because of Federal Reserve Quantitative Easing (printing money). When you increase the supply of something it makes each unit worth less. Therefore, dollars worth less means it takes more dollars to buy a gallon of gas. Oil has just been following the other commodities, corn, sugar, cotton, gold, etc. and is actually lagging some. Now speculation of stoppages in supply can increase prices on the spot market. But that usually evens out in time. All this, even the riots, has been caused by US monetary policy. If gas gets real high, the government and it's pundits will blame the oil companies. But it was caused by the government.