“drill in America and play hardball with OPEC and Iraq. Whats not to like about that?”
What does that mean? Tell the Saudis to lower their price or we’ll get the oil somewhere else? That somewhere else is going to sell it to us for less than the Saudis? Why?
Guess what Mr. Trump; among the U.S. top 15 sources of imported oil, “the Saudis” are NOT the U.S. major source of imported oil!!!; in fact the majority of U.S. imported oil does not come from the Middle East; it comes from North and South America - 63% [North America - 41% (Canada - 26%, Mexico 15%), and South America - 22%; Venezuela, Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador & Argentina]. In terms of regions, the Middle East ranks third, at 21%, followed by Africa at 15% and Russia at 1%. [I used the “YTD 2011” figures at the link below]
As far as Iraq goes, the U.S. majors are already participants in exploration and production of oil in Iraq. What are we going to do, tell Iraq to subsidize their operations? Is that how we behaved toward Europe and Japan after WWII?
Trump makes nice and very populist sound bites; which if to be believed, often means to be ignorant.
Trump is correct. US oil majors are shut out of Iraq. We spent trillions on Iraq and have our thousands of war dead and our US companies got sh*t!
http://www.businessinsider.com/sovereign-backed-oil-companies-creamed-the-multinationals-in-iraq-2010-2