text: It isn't just the western country economies dependent on it. One of the reason for gas price spikes have been a large increase in dependency from the biggest population countries, China and India. The problem is the entire world is dependent on a very limited supply of product.\nThe Western countries will never be come independent on their own supplies because they don't have enough supply to meet the demand. The only way that will change is if a new fuel supply comes along that is much cheaper and equal to or more efficient than fossil fuels, and it still requires us getting rid of the nearly 1 billion cars in the US currently.