Appel offers no apologies for needing government largesse to make money. "All oil, even fossil-fuel oil, gets government subsidies in the form of tax breaks and other incentives," he says, citing a 1998 study by the International Center for Technology Assessment showing that unsubsidized conventional gasoline would cost consumers $15 a gallon. "Before we got this, I had the only oil in the world that didn't get a subsidy."
Since we don't get oil from Iraq, it might be asked why our military is there so big, and then the wide-angle lens has to be used. Europe and Asia get oil from the region, and we get some small amount from Saudi, but since oil is a world commodity, what China buys from the ME affects what we buy from Nigeria. So we do China's work and Europe's work in protecting the oil. Why should we do their work? The oil is that important to us that if waited for China and France/Germany to pick up their share of the workload we would find our oil prices escalating beyond the comfort zone. The free ride is in China and Europe, but since we are the big piece of the world economy we have to do this to remain the big piece.