[ZULU]

There are only two ways out of this mess.

1) CLOSE THE ENRON LOOPHOLE

2) Allow drilling on ANWAR, in the midwest, and off shore drilling.

Long-term:

Coal and nuclear power augmented by solar and wind power.

[tcostell]

There's no such thing as the "Enron Loophole"

If what you really mean is a radical intervention by the government into financial market,s be careful what you wish for. the cure will definitely be worse than the disease.

[amchugh]

The DOEs projections according to this guy are that the best case price reduction for opening ANWR will be about $1.45 per barrel. It's probably worth the cost in political capital for the Republicans to open it up just in terms of lobbying money payback from the oil industry, and with the price crunch there'll be a lot of support for that from political moderates. However, it will not magically solve pricing issues. I'm not really sure what is driving current pricing, but I doubt the government can regulate or cost control it away given that oil is fungible and there is a world market beyond the US. I expect there will be a lot of political theater on the subject for the CSPAN viewers, but not much actual regulation.

Hopefully fusion will come along and improve the oil price situation, but we'll need petroleum based products for air travel long after every other application moves to another energy source.

There is a dense but interesting historic price analysis on oil here.