umm sorry to tell ya, bt it does. Why would you wish to mislead someone by telling them falsehoods?
Here is how it works.
Oil prices are created by demand.
If that demand was only between oil companies and refiners and eventually consumers, oil prices would be far lower than they are today.
BUT, we have this thing called a stockmarket, where people buy and sell commodities, and many of them have no use for the commodities they buy except to buy them and hold onto them until they go up in value so they can sell them for profit.
This is called speculative trading, and is what is responsible for the higher oil prices. (well that and a lower US dollar but we'll ignore that for the sake of simplicity)
What happens, is any world event that traders view as a threat to oil supply, is automatically viewed as a boost in future prices and a money making opportunity.
The same thing happens to orange prices when california gets a hard ice storm at the wrong time.
Traders buy up as much as they can, in order to profit on the speculated increase in future value. When they do this, this makes demand appear to be greater which drives up the prices whether there is any real slump in supply or not.
So anytime USA gets into a heated argument with an oil producing nation, or anyone gets into a war with one, it is viewed as a possible threat to supply, so traders buy buy buy.
It is how all commodities work.
-threat to supply is always viewed as increased value and future profit.
There is also a little fact that once war breaks out, every country in the world fills their strategic reserves and keeps them full, and is reluctant to let them dwindle to lower the oil market prices. So not only does war cause speculative traders to drive up prices, but also forces competition between government for the commodity, which drives the prices up.
as far as gasoline, oil effects it price slightly, but in reality, gasoline is more affected by real supply and demand than oil is. Since refiners have bought up most of the smaller refineries and closed them down, and closed down many others for maintanance and never reopened them, they have pinched supply to drive up margins.
Since their is no economic incentive for them to build new refineries just to make you and I happy, by driving up supply, while driving gas prices and margins down, they aren't going to. They'll just blame the problem on environmentalists and laugh at the suckers who believe them, all the way to the bank.
Your neighbor is quite correct.