Oil continues to climb, but is there any relief in sight? Motley full money starts now. The Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money.

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From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money. Welcome to Motley Full Money. I'm Travis Hoyam, joined today by Lou Whiteman and Dan Kaplinger. And guys, we're going to get to space. Space is going to be a big topic here today. But we do want to start with the oil markets. This is kind of the thing that everybody in the market is thinking about, if not talking

about. And Dan, I wanted to get your thoughts on what's going on because oil is not your typical

market. It's a physical product. It's traded years out in the futures contracts. And we have this

straight of Hormuz. It is more or less closed. 20% of the oil in the world goes through

that straight. What are we seeing in oil markets? Because it seems like prices are up.

We're at about $110 per barrel for both West Texas intermediate and also Brent crude right now.

But it seems like people in the oil industry continue to be worried that

things are going to get much worse, but they're not yet. So what's the real story here?

Well, it's interesting because there are so many different perspectives to look at this

from the perspective of the American consumer. Things look pretty bad. I mean, gas prices where I live were around

$2.80 a gallon in December. They're up about a dollar per gallon, up around $3.80. I think that

regardless of what the actual level is, that dollar increase is pretty consistent across the

country. And it's interesting because a lot of folks have suggested that the U.S. is insulated from the

impact of this because we don't necessarily depend directly on Persian Gulf oil.

But when you look at some of the other countries that do depend more on Persian Gulf oil,

they have not even seen the

percentage price increases we have. Korea was up about 15%. Japan's up in the 15 to 20% area.

We're up closer to 30 to 35%. So it's kind of interesting how the macroeconomics are playing out here.

The other thing, and this threatens to get a little bit wonky about futures markets and things

like that.

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