That’s what I meant by seriousness, actually setting up drilling rigs in coastal waters or ANWR. The article stated it would take 8 to 10 years for production to come on line. My belief is the mere action of the new activity will spur the other oil producing nations to ramp up production to fight for market share.
You're right, though -- if we start to act like we're about to produce (keeping in mind there's a rig shortage AND a shortage of drill ships...), all the tension goes right away from the crude mkt, and prices should go to clearing levels fairly quickly.
We can accelerate the process, too. Have CFTC reclassify banks-acting-as-agents for clients as ''large specs'' instead of their current classification as ''commercials" (aka hedgers). Specs must obey position limits; commercials are not even bound by position limits and hence can (and have, you betcha, which is part of the problem) quite literally buy all the crude futures they want.
Net result: upwards of 1.1 billion barrels of ''paper'' crude gets sold back into the mkt in 30-90 days' time, and the price drops $40-50/bbl ... and all without even setting one rig. Add to that a coherent and credible restarting of crude production in this country, and you've got $50-60 crude again.
I have watched several wells being drilled. It takes a few months to get the work done, say 9 months, and maybe a couple more to tie it into a pipe line. After that the oil is flowing. How long it takes for it to be made into gasoline I don’t know.