Since Israel has gone into Gaza, the price of oil has gone up a bit. There may be two culprits here. One is Iran, who relies on oil revenues and has been really hurt by the drop in oil prices over the past few months. They know that an Israeli war with Hamas would raise the price of oil and Hamas is just one of their proxies. They could have prompted Hamas to attack Israel to bring the oil price up and get attention away from their nuclear program. Then there is Russia, who has shut off some natural gas to Poland and Ukraine, resulting in many people freezing to death. Russia and Iran may be working together to jack the price of oil up and get the money they were making over the summer for oil.