Oil prices have dropped slightly but it's not over yet. The oil price will continue to rise simply because there is an issue of supply constraints biting against soaring global demand.

Certainly there are signs that people are cutting back on driving. Americans drove an estimated 4.3 percent less , or 11 billion fewer miles, according to the Department of Transportation, reports CNN. But what the future holds remains unclear.

The Chicago Tribune's Steve Chapman says the laws of supply and demand will eventually bring oil prices down with demand now in full retreat. Not so, says the Oil Drum. Demand growth is running ahead of supply, pure and simple. The fundamental problem is that most of the demand growth is in the developing world and most of this demand growth is subsidized which means it will continue.

That's why BusinessWeek now warns that rising oil prices could make a mild recession worse.

And then, there are a range of factors driving up the price, says Salon's Andrew Leonard.

"Explaining the high price of gasoline at my local pump requires taking into account surging demand for oil in China and India, the falling value of the dollar, the impact of commodity price speculation by energy traders and a whole constellation of factors exerting steady downward pressure on supply. Those include the Iraq war, political instability in nigeria and anti-American intransigence in Venezuela and Iran. There's also the ever-popular peak oil thesis: As the production of existing oil fields in Russia, Mexico, the North Sea and possibly Saudi Arabia inexorably declines, discovery and exploitation of new sources of oil are becoming steadily harder and more expensive.

"Even the people who have spent their entire lives studying the price of oil don't know for sure how to weigh each factor for responsibility in the total equation. Perhaps the safest thing to say is that it's all in there, in my $65 receipt. Kidnappings of oil executives in Nigeria and the nationalization of Exxon-operated facilities in Venezuela. Chinese economic growth and hedge fund manipulation. ANWR and air quality. The price of gas in the United States is a consequence of global economic growth, rising standards of living, greed, politics and the stresses induced by 6.5 billion people going about their business on a planet with limited resources."

High energy costs are a fact of life. They're here to stay. Get used to it.