High Oil Prices Met With Anger Worldwide

But prices in the United States have risen much faster than those in many parts of the developing world. Governments in developing countries often keep artificial lids on fuel costs -- sometimes by making state-owned refineries sell at a loss and using taxpayer funds to keep the refineries running, in other cases by using taxpayer funds to buy imported gasoline.

Therein lies one of the great ironies of the popular revolts against higher energy costs in nations such as Nigeria.

"The fact is, higher oil prices are not being fully passed through to the retail level in many countries," said Mohsin S. Khan, the director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the International Monetary Fund. "In the States, higher oil passes through to retail prices very quickly." But in the developing world, Khan said, "virtually everywhere, consumers are being protected in many ways, with governments absorbing the cost in their budgets. There is some pass-through, but it's not complete."

Such subsidies are by no means confined to big oil-exporting countries, like Venezuela and Iran, where gasoline prices are famously cheap, in the tens of cents per gallon.

In India, which imports about 75 percent of its crude oil, domestic fuel prices have risen less than one-third as fast as international prices, according to Hans Timmer, an economist at the World Bank; the government's failure to implement a system of market-determined prices caused state-owned refineries to lose $4.6 billion in 2004.

Next door in Pakistan, despite increases of 4.9 to 8.9 percent in September, fuel prices are still more than 15 percent under world market levels, Timmer said. Many sub-Saharan African governments have been unable to continue the budgetary cost of providing gasoline cheaply, so some have allowed prices to rise at least partially. But not all have; the Central African Republic has frozen prices at the pump since 1999.

Indonesians have been paying about 90 cents a gallon for gasoline -- until this weekend, that is, when the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announced that gasoline prices would nearly double and kerosene prices would triple. Officials said they had no choice, since fuel subsidies have swelled to about one-third of government spending. Word of the impending price hike sparked protests in many cities; on Friday, police were using tear gas to disperse thousands of demonstrators. The reaction was muted compared with the deadly rioting triggered by previous price hikes, but the government is bracing for possible violence as the impact sinks in.

Although the relatively restrained level of fuel prices in those countries has helped keep consumers spending and economies growing, the subsidies are imposing a severe burden on taxpayers and cannot continue without bankrupting some of the governments involved, economists contend. "These economies may be delaying a necessary adjustment to high oil prices," said Haruhiko Kuroda, the president of the Asian Development Bank, a Manila-based institution owned by 64 governments. He said the artificially low cost of energy translates into excessive consumption.

But it is not easy for governments to shed subsidies, because citizens get upset when the price goes up, whether it is subsidized or not.

Zhang Qihe, 43, a Beijing taxi driver, has seen gas rise from about 91 cents a gallon in 1999 to about $2.30 a gallon now. As a result, he estimates he has to work an extra hour a day to make ends meet. "After a 14-hour workday, I go home exhausted," he complained.

Likewise, in Russia, although major retailers froze prices at the pump this month until the beginning of 2006, that has done little to placate motorists who are paying the equivalent of about $2.60 a gallon, a jump of approximately 20 percent from the beginning of the year.

"The country rakes in oil. We have more oil than anyone," said Nikolai Podkopayev, 45, who drives a van in Moscow delivering car parts. "The government is just not thinking about the people."