I think it’s reasonable to note that consuming the Saudi oil now leaves more of ours in the ground for future use. The oil isn’t going to go away.
That said, one of the few government interventions in the market I might consider justified would be a bounty on US-produced oil. It is arguably a highly effective defense strategy to make the US more energy independent.
Just thought of another advantage of lower prices with regard to the fracking revolution.
It puts intense pressure on drillers to find ways to drill more cost-effectively.
The very first thing to do would be to eliminate all export controls on oil & gas. As the markets now stand, that doesn’t do a thing - but it gets a bad law off the books. Instead, we should put a small tariff on importation of oil. Not enough to matter a whole lot, necessarily, but enough to function as a shot across the bow of any future OPEC manipulations.From the Nixon Administration until the fracking boom, that would have constituted an idle threat. Now, the Saudis know that we know that we can handle higher prices. Not without pain, of course - but it would hardly be uncharted territory for us.
So the idea of whipsawing our producers again would not be on the table - reduce production again, the tariff goes up, and our production soars. And stays up indefinitely. Because legislation would allow the POTUS to raise the tariff (within limits) on his own initiative, but not to lower it without an act of Congress.