I can’t follow your thinking here. I can’t see how producing more oil here, from sources in our own territory, is going to encourage India and China to use more oil. How is refusing to produce more of our own oil going to benefit us and do anything about China & India?
As regards government “intervention”, that’s exactly what’s at the roots of the current situation. It is the government’s intervention in the form of banning exploration and production in the most potentially productive areas of the United States. It is 40 years of tinkering by the government manipulating everything related to energy that has gotten us here.
The government did not build the energy infrastructure we have. The private sector did. The government did not build refineries, did not manufacture drilling equipment, did not develop the technology for finding oil. The government did not build the tankers, the pipe lines. The government did not invest billions in research to do anything for energy production.
What the government has done is tax the investors and producers of energy. It has banned drilling, refining and exploration. The government has fought the private sector’s production of energy every inch of the way for 40 years.
We are funding our enemies by NOT drilling oil here. We are encouraging others to fight over oil because we are restricting the supply by not producing more of our own energy.
Biofuels and ethanol are not “alternative sources of energy”. They are more expensive, less efficient versions of fossil fuel. New, evolving technologies are the current and future sources of alternative energy.
If, as you seem to be saying, we can’t drill enough oil to run our economy, how can we possibly produce enough biofuels to have a positive impact? We can’t. It is impossible. The amounts of biofuels we could produce in the future are minuscule in comparison to the amounts of readily available oil in ANWR, the Gulf of Mexico, the Rockies, the pacific coast. The clean coal in Utah is of quantities to boggle the mind. The government has banned use of that, too.
The government has micromanaged energy production in this country down for 4 decades. What we don’t need is the same socialist pinheads devising more pie in the sky solutions to the problems they created.
Perhaps what you don’t understand about the oil industry is that even if we drilled ANWAR tomorrow, that oil isn’t “US oil” meant to be used domestically.
That oil goes on the world market, were we get to bid on it against China and India.
The market is more then happy to take their profits on oil no matter the cost to the consumer, and those costs will be rising, until eventually ethanol becomes “cheaper” meanwhile we (the consumer) will have to pay to compete with gas starved China an India until that price point is reached.
In 2020 the conversation very well could be: “Gas 8 bucks a gallon? Sure, good thing 5 years from now those ethanol pipelines will be up and running...”
I am suggesting that process be short circuited starting today if you please.