The shortage is not in oil, but refinery capacity. You can thank your friendly neighborhood envionmentalist for that. It has become almost impossible to get a permit to build a refinery.
You need a certain amount of surplus refining capacity so you can shut down refineries for repair and maintainance. Demand has grown, capacity has not, and everyone is running at over 95% capacity. No one is able to properly maintain things under that load. A major fire or explosion at a large refinery, and we might be looking at $10.00/gallon.
So9
The thing is SO9 Alberta has 95% of it's oil wells capped. The Province is rolling in money. They have a HUGE surplus, WHY don't they get these wells going?? I know it's expensive to start up but eventually it must pay for itself.!! I have to admit, I don't understand the oil industry as a whole but just seems like common sense to me. I cannot understand why the Western World Governments allowed us all to become Arab hostages!!