[Dane]

For Hugo Chavez there is no disguise, it is a blessing in plain view. I do expect oil prices to drop in the long run, having lived through the late 70's and early 80's, even more so if the US were to reduce its imports. At the price now even synthetic oil would pay, but OPEC would always be able to strangle the baby in the crib, so it would be foolhardy to risk capital in view of what happened in 1985 (remember shale oil)

I lived through it also, but with Chinese and Indian demand increasing, the saudi's don't have the leverage to flood the world with oil and undermine American alternative energy sources.

JMO, the next 10 years are going to be a boon for American energy producers, especially for nuclear and coal.

[fallujah-nuker]

" JMO, the next 10 years are going to be a boon for American energy producers, especially for nuclear and coal."

Those are primarily used to produce electricity, our main energy problem is petroleum for transport fuels. The only feasible application of electricity for transportation is railway electrification, but that would be minor since railways consume less than 2% of our oil.

We can produce more oil, and should, but I think we need to go begin making synthetic oil, the Sasol system used by South Africa uses existing technology. We have other options such as thermal depolymerization. Government would be ill suited to select a winning technology, that should be left to market forces. But the market forces should favor domestic oil production over imports by trade policy.

Increasing LNG imports is a terrible idea, we see where reliance upon the Middle East for or oil has gotten us, why we should not rely upon them for our natural gas?