Columnist Ken Blackwell: “In 2012, the average household spent a record $2,912 on gasoline. Compared to the 2002 average of $1,235, that is an extra $1,677 that families have been forced to spend on transportation costs. … [A] recent study found that high oil prices added $1.2 trillion to U.S. debt over the past decade. This economic drag is part of the reason our recovery from the Great Recession has been anemic and the unemployment rate remains high. To be clear, it’s not America’s great oil companies causing this, as some of their anti-corporate, anti-capitalist detractors might want you to believe. The fact is that the price of a barrel of oil – whether that oil is pumped in North Dakota or Saudi Arabia – is determined by a global oil market that is affected by supply and demand factors around the world. Anything and everything … can send prices higher. This geopolitical exposure of the global oil market to volatility explains why Americans are paying so much for gas despite record domestic production.”