Oil prices, costs of shipping, oil prices

I found this in the internet, it is unsubstantiated with evidence however:

In Europe, the costs for transport is low when compared to the price of goods, regardless of the fact that gas is so much more expensive in Europe than the US. This means that higher gas prices have little impact on goods transport; they keep increasing.

also, too lazy to check the truth in this one, but someone pointed:

The U.S. Energy Information Administration on Wednesday reported gasoline inventories rose 2.9 million barrels last week while gasoline demand over the past four weeks slumped 1.4 percent versus last year.

So did oil prices rise sharply this year due mainly because of rising demand or speculation? Seems like a mix of both.