Some oil experts think the Iraq conflict has actually helped drive the price of oil up.

An excerpt from the NYT story:

Milton R. Copulos, who is president of the National Defense Council Foundation, a nonprofit group based in Washington that lobbies for less reliance on foreign oil, laid out the more familiar case when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March. The “hidden costs” of gasoline imports in 2005, he said, include $780 billion in military costs, a figure that, if acknowledged and spread over all imports, would add $4.05 to the price of each gallon of gasoline.

But a few days ago, in a telephone interview, Mr. Copulos said the picture was even bleaker: the basic market price, he said, was being pushed up by the damage Iraq’s oil industry has sustained during the current war and by the threat that the conflict could spread. For each barrel of oil sold, “there has been up to a $20 premium that is directly tied to what’s going on over there militarily,” he said.

Anything over $55 represented the premium, he said. The price of a barrel rose at one point to $78 earlier this year. Lately it has been in the mid-$60’s, because of a world market made tight partly by Iraq.

In fairness, some experts strongly dispute that view, arguing that Saudi Arabia has made up for lost Iraqi production.

And a bigger factor still might be the surge in demand stemming from economic growth in China and India.