Incidentally, given that we "rape" them for oil, how come we pay so much for it?

That's easy. It's because Gordon Brown takes 66p in every £ spent at the pumps to spend on extra Jags and grace-and-favour apartments for Prescott, Blunkett and Mandelson, expensive jollies fact finding missions for eurocrats, ill-planned occupations of foreign countries, and porn.*

*I might be making one of these up.