"With daily global demand roughly 85 million barrels per day, the world's oil producers have less than 2 million barrels per day of spare production capacity, and most of that is for Saudi blends of oil that are less ideal for manufacturing transportation fuels."
"http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.mpl/business/energy/3817761
Like I've said repeatedly, America needs to follow Brazil's lead and get off foreign oil dependency altogether. And follow France's lead who now generates 75% of their electricity from nuclear power.
Those both would be great starts. There was a great article in National Geographic last month about Nuclear energy's resurgence and how new technology will make it possible to create much more efficient reactors.
I agree about the nuclear bit. We should've had many more of them than we do, and we can still fix that.
I'm not so sure that it matters where we buy our oil. In fact... if there is a national security component to this it would be to save our own reserves for even leaner times. If we're concerned that some foreign country is going to cut off our oil supply then we're better off taking as much of their oil as we can now, before they do. Then we'll still have plenty of our own supply left for when they do.
Just a thought.