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While consumers and commercial enterprises have gotten a bit of a respite at the petrol pump as of late, the escalation in oil costs we have witnessed across the past year has directed to some outstanding modifications in gross consumer behavior. Numerous car-owners have ditched their gas-guzzling pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles at the closest used-car lot and used the proceeds to purchase some gas-sipping rides. Companies with large distribution webs have redesigned their shipping agendas, crafting more effective roads that accommodated larger truckloads.

The consequence: Gasoline sales collapsed during the first half of the year as domestic demand fell to its lowest level in five years. As a matter of fact, the United States Department of Transportation reported that Americans drove almost 5% lower in June than a year ago, and also said that the buses, subways and light-rail systems that make up the nation’s public/mass-transit systems climbed by 3.4% in the first quarter of the year.

Lately, U.S. gasoline stations have been constrained to adjust their prices (again) after prices at the pump dropped down below $3.80 a gallon - a powerful decline from the prices of $4 a gallon and higher that motorists were thrust to deal with as the summer driving season began.

Even in China, oil imports dropped considerably in July on reducing global demand. It will be interesting to see if - and by how much - the Summer Olympic Games bear upon these numbers. And even if the games propel a spike in requirement, some analysts are now predicting that a post-Olympic economic “lull” will afflict Mainland China.

This energy-price enigma does not stop there, either, as such geopolitical “wild cards” as the Russian invasion of Georgia continue to whipsaw costs. Even with such tensions, however, energy traders brushed off concerns about major supply disturbances - not the response we would’ve seen just a few months back. Late last week, in fact, oil prices took clues from the newfound strength in the dollar and dropped beneath $112 a barrel, a number not even conceivable in mid-July, when crude-oil prices reached a record level of $147.

All’s well on the energy front, it seems.

Nevertheless, one should by all odds not believe it. In the near term, crude-oil prices could well keep going down … but it’s only going to take one “real” scare - a terrorist attack, or some sort of event that creates protracted supply worries - to cause oil prices to spike in a big way.

And in the long haul, demand is going to keep rising in such emerging-market countries as China and India. That can only send oil prices higher.

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