Whilst I realise that like most posts you make these days (For example that silly one about throwing away 15p off fuel vouchers) it is designed to make us all think 'Wow, that Firestar guy is so rich and succesful', I'll skip over that and answer it at face value.
High fuel prices are not good for many people - even those of us like me, who isn't bothered by fuel prices because I don't do big miles, or you, who isn't bothered by fuel prices because you are fabulously wealthy and remind us all you work in oil and gas 3 times a day. High fuel prices harm economic output - it puts more pressure on the day to day costs of business and consumers alike. There is a clear link between periods of high fuel prices and periods of low or negative growth in an economy.
High oil prices are not good long term for the oil industry, either. It gives short term gain at the expense of long term prosperity because the higher and more sustained fuel and oil prices are, the bigger the push and the drive for alternatives and the more of an issue efficiency become. In short, as fuel prices rise, demand for fuel falls, slowly at first, and then quite quickly as demand destruction begins to kick in. Saudi Arabia knows this - which is why its something of a price moderate within OPEC. Hyper-priced oil only benefits producers with small oil reserves, the theory being that by the time the effects of high oil prices begun to have a significant drag on the oil industry they'll have exhuasted the reserves anyway.
It is a common misconception that fuel is a completely price inelastic product. It's not. It's far from a price elastic product, either, but its a fallacy to beleive that price can continue to rise and people will have no choice but to pay it. It's simple - if fuel was £1000 a litre, almost nobody would buy it, if fuel is £1 a litre, almost everyone buys it, therefore there exists a pricepoint between these two where demand destruction kicks in.
The correct price for fuel is not 30p, nor it is £1.30 a litre. It's a balance between the two. Cheap fuel can be as destructive long term to an economy as expensive fuel. The cheaper fuel is, the more wasteful the public become with it and the less value people place on efficiency. This also makes them more vulnerable to price spikes - the Americans have seen the price of gas almost double in under 3 years. We have seen nothing like this level of percentage increase because the high tax content of our fuel price isolates us from the effect of global oil price spikes, to a certain degree. A 100% increase in the price of a household or business bill is more difficult to deal with than a 30% increase, regardless of the actual cost.
I don't think we need fuel at 70p a litre nor do I think we will ever see it again in our lifetimes. This doesn't mean that there are not unfair elements of fuel pricing, though. The key one is the fact that VAT is payable on the product price *and* the duty price. This is, IMHO, unfair. You are paying VAT - Value Added Tax - on an element of a product that does not add value. You are paying tax on, well, a tax.
I would therefore suggest two measures to redress the balance fuel wise.
Firstly, remove VAT on duty. Charge VAT only on the product price. This would immediatly reduce the price of a litre of fuel by 11p.
Secondly, Labours act of hiking duty by almost 10p in the months following the climbdown after the 2008 oil price spike was unjust and opportunistic. Repeal half of this. This would reduce the price of fuel again by 4p. I would argue that it is not appropriate to increase duty by inflation, given that a large part of the measure of inflation is fuel price itself. Increase fuel price, in turn increasing inflation, leading to increased fuel prices, in turn increasing inflation. Great. VAT take increases with increased fuel prices anyway, as does tax take on oil when oil prices increase, so it's not as if the government doesn't benefit from inflationary increases without increasing duty.
The net result of this would be unleaded fuel at 115p a litre and diesel fuel at 122p a litre. Not cheap by any means, but not disproportionately expensive either.
It will, however, never happen.
It is also completely misleading to compare fuel prices here with fuel prices in Europe, converted to Sterling. The Sterling is near record lows against the Euro and considerably down on the average exchange rate over the last 10 years. Put simply even though we pay a fortune for fuel when we go to Europe, the cost of fuel in France to a Frenchman paid in Euros is not as high as the cost of fuel in England to a Englishman paid in Sterling.