Presumably oil produced from wells will be sold in the US, though there is no specific guarantee that it will happen. If I were selling that oil, I would much rather sell it here than ship it somewhere else farther away because it would be far more expensive and riskier to ship to Asia or Europe, the other big markets.
Drilling for oil here is a necessary step, but only a step in the transition away from oil. Our main focus needs to be on replacing gasoline as the fuel for cars. We burn around 9 or 10 million barrels of oil per day in our cars and trucks. That's nearly half of total U.S. consumption, and it is clearly unsustainable long-term. But switching from gasoline to anything else is a 20 year project at least. Despite the ambitious talk about breaking our dependence on foreign oil in 10 years, unless someone invents a fuel that can power our cars without depleting our food supply, or otherwise provides a seamless transition for today's gasoline vehicles, we will remain dependent on oil for a long time to come. I will also note that we don't need to totally cease using foreign oil, we just need to break the market power of oil-producing states that would use oil as a weapon in political and economic warfare. On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 4:30 PM, Zaphod wrote: > can someone explain to me how drilling for oil will ease our > dependence on foreign oil? As far as I know, we buy our oil on the > open market. The private companies that will be drilling/refining the > oil will be selling it on the open market. If anything, it may drop > the price of oil lower, but then OPEC would just cut production back > to maintain the prices. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;203748912;27390454;j Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:268637 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
