LAGOS, Nigeria — Soldiers have barricaded key roads in Nigeria’s commercial capital of Lagos as the president offered a concession to halt fuel price protests that he said were being stoked by provocateurs seeking anarchy.

Troops and police also blocked entrances to protest venues in Nigeria’s second-largest city of Kano on Monday, including a park near a university and a square in the city center.

The next time you pay $3.50 dollars for a gallon of gas, stop and think about a basic rule of economics. When demand is low and supply is strong, prices should fall. Right?

Now apply that to oil. People drive less in the winter. The American economy is slow. The Euro Zone has stalled. China and India are slowing down. So demand for oil worldwide is low. So why is oil trading high at $113 a barrel, more than twice the price it was trading at five years ago when the global economy was booming? What in the world is going on?

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A Russian tanker carrying fuel for an iced-in Alaska city that without a delivery could run out of crucial supplies before winter’s end encountered ice early Friday in the eastern Bering Sea.

The ice was not a surprise. The 370-foot tanker Renda will have to go through more than 300 miles of sea ice to get to Nome, a city of about 3,500 people on the western Alaska coastline that did not get its last pre-winter fuel delivery because of a massive storm.

If the delivery of diesel fuel and unleaded gasoline is not made, the city likely will run short of fuel supplies before another barge delivery can be made in spring.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (WJZ) — Get ready for a possible jump at the pump. Governor Martin O’Malley wants to raise the gas tax. Now drivers are sounding off.

Andrea Fujii has the outrage.

It wasn’t the news one driver wanted to hear right after buying a new sports car.

“It doesn’t sound so pleasing to me as I fill up for gas. Fifteen cents a gallon?” he said.

Yes, Governor O’Malley is considering an additional 15-cent gas tax to pay for state infrastructure projects that create jobs.

“What we need to figure out is, are we willing to pay another penny to bring those things about, or a nickel, or a dime or, as Gus Bauman and his commission say, another 15 cents?” O’Malley said.

LONDON — BP has struck a deal to receive around $1 billion from one of its minority partners in the blown-out Gulf of Mexico well, raising hopes it will successfully pursue other companies involved and reduce its bill for the disaster.

BP PLC said Thursday that MOEX Offshore 2007 LLC, which had a 10 percent interest in the Macondo well, has agreed to pay $1.065 billion to settle all claims between the companies over the accident on the Deepwater Horizon rig.

Under the settlement, MOEX, a unit of Japanese trading house Mitsui & Co., agreed to recognize findings by the U.S. Presidential Commission that the accident “was the result of a number of separate risk factors, oversights and outright mistakes by multiple parties and a number of causes.”

Most Americans believe taking a trip this summer is valuable, and many plan to do so despite rising airfares and sky-high prices at the pump, according to data from a spate of recent polls, surveys and predictions.

Six in 10 Americans say that going somewhere on vacation this year is important, according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll.

However, 71 percent predict they will have to spend more on transportation in order to get there. That compares with 39 percent of Americans who last year said they would spend more on transportation, when the average price of gas in the U.S. was about $2.80 a gallon.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Oil prices plunged more than 8% Thursday as weak economic data and a strengthening dollar drove crude to its biggest one-day drop since April 2009.

The main U.S. oil contract for June delivery settled down $9.44, or 8.6%, to $99.80 a barrel. That’s its lowest level since mid-March and marks its biggest one-day percentage drop in two years. Brent crude, the European benchmark, fell $10.73 to $110.46 a barrel.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — President Obama repeated his call Tuesday for an end to $4 billion in oil industry tax breaks as gas prices approach $4 a gallon and after a top lawmaker indicated a possible shift in Republican policy.

In a letter to congressional leaders, the president said the oil industry is profitable enough without the tax incentives and that the money should be spent on alternative energy sources and conservation.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – A Massachusetts biotechnology company says it can produce the fuel that runs Jaguars and jet engines using the same ingredients that make grass grow.

Joule Unlimited has invented a genetically-engineered organism that it says simply secretes diesel fuel or ethanol wherever it finds sunlight, water and carbon dioxide.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based company says it can manipulate the organism to produce the renewable fuels on demand at unprecedented rates, and can do it in facilities large and small at costs comparable to the cheapest fossil fuels.

WASHINGTON – Steady improvement in the economy may soon come at a price — faster inflation.

Shoes, clothes, tires, plastics and other products all cost more at the wholesale level last month, putting pressure on businesses to pass the increases along to their customers.

The hikes also give ammunition to critics who fear that the Federal Reserve’s bold steps to strengthen the economy have started to feed inflation and need to be reined in. Those critics include some Fed officials.