The correlation between the rise in oil prices and the Bush's presidency can be seen from the following graph:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Brent_Spot_monthly.svg/800px-Brent_Spot_monthly.svg.png
The price of oils seems to be almost constant or even decreasing from 1987 (beginning of the graph) till Bush's presidency, when it steadily goes up. Hence, one concludes, the rise in oil prices is the consequence of George W. Bush's policies.
This point of view, however, does not hold the closer scrutiny, as we look more carefully at the dates and correlate them with the particular events:
Let's us keep in mind that the Bush's presidency occurred during 2001-2008
What we see in the graph is:
1. The overall rise in oil prices begins in 1999, during the Clinton's presidency, even before George W. Bush became his party's main candidate.
2. The oil prices begin to fall as the result of George Bush becoming the president and continue to fall till 2002, despite 9/11 events and the NATO invasion of Afghanistan during this period.
3. The next rise in prices begins in 2002, a year before the invasion of Iraq, and seems unaffected by the Iraq invasion. The latter can be seen from the median on the following graph:
http://www.oilworld.tk/wp-content/uploads/Oil-price-charts-1.jpg
If anything can be said about the correlation between the oil prices and the Iraq war, it is that the price growth was slowed by the US invasion in 2003, as well as after the killing of the anti-American leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and begging of the coordinated US-Iraqi counter-terrorist operation Operation Together Forward in the middle of 2006.
4. By taking a more generous timeline, we see that the current rise in the oil price is not unprecedented, and can be claimed to be "all time high" only if we discount the inflation.
http://2buygold.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/1306229445-32.gif
5. Finally, returning to the very first graph, we note that the significant fall in the oil prices in 2009, i.e. when Barack Obama became the president, was followed by even steeper increase, despite the American withdrawal from Iraq and the steps to appease the Arab World undertaken by the Obama administration.
Conclusions:
1. There is no obvious correlation between the oil prices and the war in Iraq - the oil price begins to rise steadily before the beginning of war and does not experience jumps as the results of the military actions. Thus, the rise in prices most likely determined by deeper reasons than George Bush's policies.
2. There are however obvious instances when the oil price growth was slowed as the result of the military action (beginning of war in 2003 and American successes in mid-2006.)
3. The rise of oil prices so far looks insensitive to the attempts of the Obama administration to annul George W. Bush policies by withdrawing from Iraq and engaging with the Arab World (i.e. the oil-producing countries).
The oil prices continue to rise.
Added later:
A possible objective reason for the oil price growth might be the fact that the consumption of oil has been growing faster than its production, as indicated here.
While Saudi Arabia has expressed its willingness to increase the oil production, out of fear that sharp increases in price may damage the market, the OPEC failed to achieve the corresponding agreement.
However, the data shown in these articles do not give a straightforward explanation for the steady growth of the oil price since 2002.
