Your first statement is pure bullshit. Has absolutely nothing to do with anything except your hatred of Bush.
Er.... no, i didn't particularly like Bush, he was a maniac who went to war for oil. Then so did Obama. In fact I don't particularly like the US govt, nor the govts of other countries like the UK, China, France etc etc etc.
That's what govts and politicians are. They often do things that makes it easy for people to hate.
However you're putting me in the "you love democrats no matter what and hate republicans no matter what" category. It seems this is the default for people to slap each other with. But, I'm not in this category.
Secondly, Saudi Arabia runs OPEC. This is because it is the largest supplier in the global distribution of oil from OPEC. Iraq's production was a drop in the bucket, compared to almost all the other OPEC countries. The price manipulation, at the time of the Iraq War, was sought by the OPEC nations as the price per barrel had plummeted and their cutting back production was the way that they used to raise prices. The HYPE of the cut off of Iraq oil, by the war, although negligible, raised the price on commodity markets, and at the pump. After it was seen that the loss of Iraq oil did NOTHING to production (Saudi Arabia picked up whatever slack Iraq had been) the price subsided again.
It wasn't about oil, That's historically proven.
Saudi Arabia doesn't run OPEC.
In fact in 1999 when Chavez was elected democratically to be leader of Venezuela, he went to OPEC and said they should cut production to increase prices.
Chavez Tells OPEC to Use Politics, Curb `Imperialism' (Update1) - Bloomberg
"Chavez Tells OPEC to Use Politics, Curb `Imperialism' "
Hugo Chavez: The man who raised oil prices
"Hugo Chavez: The man who raised oil prices" November 2000
"One man is responsible for the trebling the price of crude oil in the past 18 months. Not only that, he is a leftist opponent of globalisation and a bosom friend of Fidel Castro (with whom he played baseball and sang a duet for the TV cameras recently). As such, he deserves a place in the pantheon of demons alongside Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Molosevic. But far from being demonised, his name is barely mentioned in the media here."
Oh, the right seemed to have a problem with him, alongside "leftist" Saddam, as if Saddam was a leftist. He increased oil prices because of what I said. You can read that article if you like.
BBC NEWS | Business | Chavez warning opens Opec summit
"Chavez warning opens Opec summit"
""If the United States was mad enough to attack Iran or aggress Venezuela again the price of a barrel of oil could reach $150 or even $200," he said."
Why would Chavez think the US was going to invade Iran? Oh yeah, OPEC member which doesn't like the US, Iraq went, Libya went, Venezuela went for 4 days, and Iran......... hasn't gone.