The only thing that's cheaper in foreign drilling and production is the labor, and that's where the figures become skewed.
If you factor in the initial and ongoing cost of technology and expertise imported from the United States which were and are required to develop and maintain foreign reserves, we produce cheaper than anyplace in the world, and this is disregarding the cost of transportation of foreign oil to our shores.
In most oil producing areas of the world, if assistance from the United States was eliminated, their oil would cease to exist in a very short time - at any price.
We can't wake up one morning and say we're going to stop the importation of foreign oil by producing more of our own.
It would take years to develop the infrastructure necessary to increase our production to that extent, and this is not going to happen without a clear political mandate to explore our own resources.
One point I will concede:
We need more refineries.
I appreciate the opening remark. I guess some of you aren't able to disagree with someone without first making a condescending, pejorative remark. If you will read my posting carefully I started out by saying "I believe," which is an indicator I am not positive about what I am saying. And if you follow through on my posting you may also note I posed it almost like a question. I don't know all the answers to the problem. On the other hand, and I am still asking the question, is the only thing keeping us from producing more of our own oil the fact we are politically unwilling to drill in certain areas, or is it that the cost of drilling from older fields exceeds the value of oil on the world market, or is it both? I hear a lot of mixed information about what we have in Alaska, from an additional 10% of current production to almost a doubling.