What cheap oil in the Middle East?
Oil may seem expensive, but that is only because it has been too cheap in the recent past.
For years and years Saudi Arabia and the OPEC have been dumping oil on the market at lower prices than production costs in an attempt to suppress competition from alternative energy supplies.
They reap the benefit during the period (now) when supply cannot meet demand.
Economically (and I speak as an outsider to the United States), the USA is in a very good long term strategic position.
When the economies of China and the developing nations come into fruition, the oil of the Middle East will have been used up.
The only developed countries (other than Norway) with ample energy reserves (coal, oil, nuclear) will be the United States and Canada.
In Israel, the arab papers have been filled for years-and-years with the theory that this result was a “grand conspiracy” by the evil Jooos that run America to leave the arabs with nothing.
The only arab country doing anything about this is Egypt and Quatar, both of which are trying to make sure they will have a developed non-oil-dependent economy in 25-50 years. (Egypt more out of necessity than Quatar -— Eqypt has some oil, but not like the other countries.)
The mere threat of opening US federal lands to drilling will drop the international price of oil by $25 a barrel or more. The price of oil today is driven by 3 factors...
1) Speculation
2) Currency fluctuation
3) Supply & Demand
As soon as the Fed opens up govt owned land for drilling...watch the speculators run for the hills.
The price will drop without a single hole being drilled.