The biggest customer for oil today is China, closely followed by India. Both nations guzzle oil and coal to fuel their industrial expansion as well as the increasingly huge numbers of private cars on their roads. The demand of both countries continues to rise year on year. Also, almost all the world's easily accessible oil has now been recovered and the remaining reserves are harder and more expensive to access.
The continually rising prices we see simply reflect those two underlying factors. Western governments won't admit it as they don't want to 'offend' India or China in the same way as they ignore the fact those countries have almost completely destroyed western economies by taking all our former manufacturing industries. Instead, they just blame former governments and other safe targets and say recovery is around the corner (or 'bumping along the bottom', 'green shoots of recovery' etc)
I really think these continually rising fuel prices are here to stay as oil becomes scarcer and India and China continue to grow. Petrol will probably hit £2 per litre next year and continue to rise after that. The west had better get used to it. Unless someone thinks some magic wand will reverse the world's economy, the reducing oil reserves and the rising oil demand resulting in prices reversing and starting to fall!