Petrol prices continue to climb and Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, recently responded to increasing community concerns by explaining it was not his fault because he had no control over international oil prices.
But there are alternatives to oil and some claim the Australian government should and could do more to promote an alternative fuels industry.
Swedish Prime Minister, Goran Persson, has plans for his country to be independent of oil by 2020.
He wants Swedish farms to produce enough ethanol to run the countries motorcars.
It's ambitious, but perhaps not as ambitious as British airline boss, Richard Branson's plan for all of Virgin and Virgin Blue planes to one day run on ethanol.
Mr Branson wants to break his company's dependence on oil for two reasons: because the price keeps going up and also because it isn't environmentally friendly.
He believes ethanol will replace oil over the next 20 or 30 years.
In the US, ethanol is produced from corn and this year it is estimated that ethanol production will consume 20 percent of the US corn crop, pushing up prices of not just corn, but also Australian sorghum, as world markets respond to increasing demand.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, ethanol production adds US30 cents to the value of each bushel of corn, and according to the Renewable Fuels Association $US4.5 billion to US farm income annually.
Brazil is the world's most efficient producer of ethanol and it uses sugar cane as the primary source. Last year Brazil produced 4.2 billion gallons of ethanol at an estimated production cost of US$0.81/gallon, excluding capital costs.
By comparison it costs US$1.03/gallon to produce ethanol from corn in the US.
Interesting, in his State of the Union address earlier this year, US President George Bush, suggested it was hydrogen rather than ethanol which would emerge as the dominant transport fuel of tomorrow.
He said: "With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom, so the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free".
The US President has backed this vision with at a $1.2 billion commitment to research into the new technology.
It's fair to conclude there will be a worldwide transition from oil to something else, but we don't know how rough or smooth this transition might be, nor whether in 20 years time ethanol, or hydrogen, or something else, will be the dominant transport fuel.
But as one former Saudi Arabian oil minister famously commented: the Stone Age didn't end because the world ran out of stones and so the oil age will end before we run out of oil.
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