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The month of September was not a good time to be on the road in Europe, and in some cases, the U.S.
From truck drivers to taxi cabs, traffic has been purposely slowed in several countries where traffic-stalling campaigns have been occurring in reaction to escalating fuel prices.
Truckers and taxis blocked roads in London, Spanish fishermen formed a blockade at the mouth of the Port of Barcelona, and barge operators blocked the Seine River in Paris as a fuel panic gripped the continent.
Unlike the reaction in the U.S., where escalating crude-oil prices have been blamed as the culprit, European drivers are also complaining about the depressed value of their currencies and exorbitant gasoline taxes at the pump.
European countries' high gas taxes, which can price gas at the pump as much as four times higher than in the U.S., have produced revenues for governments to subsidize sectors like public transportation.
In the U.S., a $2 per-gallon diesel price spurred some independent truckers into action at the ports of Los Angeles and Oakland, when they refused to haul containers out of marine terminals. This was certainly bad timing as peak season ensues.
In late September, the Clinton Adminstration made the controversial decision to dip into the nation's oil reserves, tapping 30 million barrels of crude from the 571 million-barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
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