I think the key difference between leaders and political hacks is that leaders address issues that will be problems in the future. We have known about potential oil problems for decades and nobody has really tried to increase our reserves or build new refineries during that time.
Even after 9/11 nobody really made an attempt to ease our dependence on foreign oil. If there were a few leaders present in congress, we would have been drilling in ANWR the next day. But it looks like we live in an age of political hacks.
There are good reasons to do domestic drilling. Independence/security is one. Returning the money to the economy is the other.
But as for the price at the pump, that's another story.
Oil to priced and traded globally. In order to affect the price of oil you have to do enough to dent Global Supply. Anything less than flooding the market will be intentionally offset by other oil producing nations reducing output.
We're in a situation of such inelasticity that outputting a gazillion barrels of oil gets you $120/barrel but outputting 1.1 gazzillion barrels gets you $30/barrel. In other words making 10% more gets 70% less.
Other producers would be willing to sacrifice some of their production to keep oil at $120.
We'd have to pump enough to overcome the willingness of the rest of world's ability to offset that volume.
The only other way to make pumping ANWAR and other locations pay is to nationalize the marketing of that oil. Basically force the oil to be sold directly to US refineries at Cost+$10. That could be used to offset the cost of imported oil.
I doubt there is political will to nationalize an industry. Nor does it probably sound kosher with our WTO and other trade obligations, I suspect.
There are good reasons to pump more of our own oil, but the pump is not likely to be one of them.
Commenting by HaloScan
