I realize that, but your savings is from personally lower demand even if it's not significantly affecting the market price.
I'm not advocating a federal speed limit of 55 mph. I'm just fascinated with the contradictions that are popping up as "conservative" has come to mean something so different these days. The "conserve" of "conservative" has been discarded, and so-called "conservatives" are acting like warmed-over liberals of yesteryear...right along with those who push for more federal involvement in our lives and also call themselves conservative! It's amusing.
It’s not just ‘our’ oil flow we must be concerned with.
Yes, it's a global market...and I feel good about taking the lead and spending my hard-earned wages on keeping oil costs down* for our competitors like China, who are gobbling up what they can to build for the future...how 'bout you?
Heck, if we can open up our interior reserves instead of using up off-shore and foreign sources first, we might be able to make it even cheaper for them...and then have to pay higher prices down the road because we've used our own first. Cool. eh?
*as you pointed out, if we keep the price down for us, it's down for others.
As far as the free flow of oil...our economy is not the only one affected by restraints on oil supply. As you pointed out, it is a global market, but it is also a global economy. If the rest of the world slips into recession, and possibly even depression if the free flow of oil is interrupted, only the arrogant and ignorant would believe that that economic turmoil will not reach our shores, of course followed not to distantly by global political instability.
Even if we didn't get one drop of oil from the Persian gulf, it is in our interests to make sure that others who need it can. Petroleum is the life blood of the world economy...always has been, and will be for the foreseeable future.
BTW, we have more oil reserves domestically than we could use for hundreds of years, and those reserves only increase the more we look. I'm not worried about using our own oil first.