Why are the Oil , Gas Prices rising?

Because demand worldwide outstrips supply. Oil and gas production peaked in 2004. Demand however continues to escalate with previously frugal countries like India and China (remember Mao's bicycles?) have aspirations to live like Americans now they can afford it. Americans cannot afford it, but they borrow what they want. Prices will only stop rising when demand matches supply once more, for example because a workable alternative becomes cheaper.

Speculators know that this is unlikely to happen for a while, so they are onto a dead cert by buying oil and gas and hoarding it for later, when prices will be much higher, and the speculators can make a tidy profit. This fuels demand still more, so up go prices ever faster.

The President of the USA is just a bloke with a winning smile. He cannot force anyone to lower their demand for energy more effectively than simply allowing the market to charge ridiculous amounts for it and hope some people stop buying it at those silly prices.

this is because there are other factors to consider such as costs of labor and other production inputs. Oil is an input for gasoline so if its price rises then cost/unit production increases which leads for the supply of oil to shift to the left (decrease, which may be slight or not) which causes the the equilibrium price to go up. Then demand is increasing because of worldwide needs for booming economies like India and China and our of course which shifts the demand curve to the right (increase) and leads to yet another price increase. That explains why increase in oil prices have a really big effect on prices going up. If demand increased at a slower pace or supply decreased a lot less then this wouldn't be the case. Now, when oil prices go down, then the supply curve shifts to the right but not as much because usually drops in oil prices are minimal. Yet, the demand curve still does the same because of the expectations of the people in newly emerging economies, causing the increase in demand to outweight supply and prices go up but no as much as when supply decreased. Plus prices are sticky. For example, anyone will always take a pay raise, but even if it was explained to you that a pay cut is necessary to keep costs low, you wouldn't take it. So when normal market forces would lower the price of oil, cartels like OPEC collude to keep quantities at certain levels in order keep oil prices from dropping too much, especially since they play a big factor on the supply side. Treat the two scenarios separately. You will see it's a demand side problem unless supply can be greatly increased which won't happen because oil prices are high elsewhere which means our drilling companies won't have incentive to sell just domestically(yup companies want to make a profit, oh no not evil profits!!). The world is becoming more globalized in economic terms, this means that trying to cut back our demand will not have as great of an effect as it normally would since most automobiles in the world are here, but this is changing. And unless alternative resources are as profitable as oil, then producers will have no incentive to shift to that in the near future. That's how the market economy works.

Because we refuse to provide for ourselves. The people to blame are the far left. These people are so crazy about the environment that they are willing to see our economy demise as long as some of the wildlife are not hurt. There is said to be 3x as much oil in just a tiny part of Alaska, then saudi Arabia! But no, it might hurt some animals

I forget . .. what was the question?

Oh, yeah, why are oil and gas prices rising.

Actually recently they have been falling but of course you're not interested in why that is I'm assuming.

the real answer to the question is "because people are willing to pay more".

shortage of availability.