Crude oil -- US? Check! UK/Germany? No!
Refineries -- US? Check! UK/Germany? No!
In Japan, a burger is expensive and fish is cheap.
In the Caribbean, some bartenders will try to cheat you by pouring too much rum in the glass (which is made locally and is cheap), and shorting you on the Coca-Cola (which is imported, and expensive).
The point is, just because gasoline is expensive in some other country doesn't automatically mean the same economic conditions apply to the price of gasoline here. I noticed no mention was made of Venezuela, where a US gallon of gasoline currently goes for fourteen cents American (source: http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/global_gasprices/price.html), but instead you cited two of the most expensive countries in the world for gasoline at this time.
Sorry, don't mean to go off on you Gert, as I have actually come to have a good deal of respect for you from your previous posts in various automotive forums, but this really bugs me when people suggest I should "stop whining" or "get used to it" in relation to gas prices here, when in reality we should question why it has gone up by 250% in just a few years' time.