Quoting the NY Times is equivalent to stating “I have no brain.”

Sorry to burst your bubble, but maybe you should keep up with current news on oil deposits. Over 40 million barrels of oil have been located at a field in Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota. The compares to the 105 million barrel field of Saudi Arabia that OPEC controls. Anwar is currently estimated at over 20 million barrels. Scientist have recently come up with new techniques for finding the size of oil fields that has shed new light on the real size of fields. The field in Montana was original though to be only 4.5 million barrels and thus went largely untapped. This new technology can set the world of the doomsdayers on their ears if the new technology consistently shows a 10:1 increase in available oil at each field tested.

Also, it is indeed true that the EPA that is the major roadblock to new refineries. Congress can indeed override the EPA, but the EPA is actually part of the Executive Branch and as such the President can issue an executive order that basically neuters the EPA when it comes to national security; and this is definitely a national security issue.

Our existing refineries are capable of processing the crude from the USA. How do you think ARCO was providing such inexpensive gas from the California fields? I happen to know that two refineries in California were doing that production.

major A+ points to payton.

In an expanding economy controlling demand is only possible through increasing prices. Since that’s politically and socially painful for necessities, the option is to increase supply. We know that there are billions and billions of barrels of oil available in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. Places like Tennessee are starting to recover their oil industry. Oil may never get below $40 a barrel again, but $125 is a point where long term planners will see a benefit in increasing production so they can at least take advantage of $80 oil which will probably be the stabilizing point. The problem is that our government simply acts as a barrier to doing what needs to be done. Someone needs to disband the EPA, and do it immediately.

Further, the reason oil prices have skyrocketed is because in the 1990’s OPEC made a conscious decision to dump cheap oil on the market, thus eliminating the cost effectiveness of drilling here in the USA. As our oil industry shrank OPEC tightened supply, thus increasing prices. Now, we find ourselves unable to expand our oil industry because of ridiculous regulations on building new refineries and drilling new oil fields.

Countries that produce oil have very cheap gas. If you control the supply, you can dictate the price. Our national interests are for lower gas prices, and if we control the supply of oil for that gas then the global demand will be lessoned and thus overall prices will drop.