Oil Prices

According to the news oil prices should have reached a high for the year and will not rise further and will start to lower as fall arrives unless something happens to cause a shortage in oil supplies, like another Katrina, oil spills etc. which can cause prices to fluctuate. Isn't it amazing we could have been energy independent by now. For those of you old enough to remember during the alleged oil crises in the 1970's I seem to remember a coal gasification program where we would make our own oil from coal and rid ourselves of the dependence on foreign oil.There are so many alternatives today, one more energy efficient vehicles, and why not vehicles that run entirely on alcohol, we can use synthetic oil to lubricate the parts, if we start to manufacture and use alcohol in mass quantities the price should drop making it cheaper to use.What are your opinions and ideas in this area, ideas on what we can do till hydrogen technology takes over, and we have vehicles running on hydrogen, a renewable energy which burns with as I understand no pollution