[Il_Mostro]

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Why should the price of oil be dependant on the bio-mass that made it up -- nobody was doing anything with it anyway?

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I'm not really arguing it should, I just find the disparity between the prices interesting.

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Economics --
Why would the fair price of gasoline be anything different than what the market forces of supply and demand dictate?

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This is really a too big discussion, but let me give some pointers.
The supply side of the supply-demand is completely off-scale. We don't have much oil left (some 50 years of current usage, and that's being generous). We are very soon entering a time when oil extraction will shrink, it happens roughly when half the oil is extracted. Meaning we will have less and less oil each year, and still we would really need more and more to feed the current exponential-growth way of life. Unless we can find a new source of energy, and so far there is nothing that can even begin to make any sort of difference.

So, I propose that supply-demand would have worked well (maybe) if we had an unlimited supply. Which we don't, but current prices does not in any way take that into account.