The oil markets don’t think that long term - the one thing that is true is that if the pipeline and all drilling was approved tomorrow, it wouldn’t drop oil prices, as it would be several years before any of it was on-line.
Don’t you think that threatening to increase our supply would stimulate foreigners to increase what they supply? They have every interest in making American production unprofitable (that’s the mechanism that killed west Texas oil production back in the ‘80’s, remember?)
So the price for crude might not drop tomorrow, but it would be moving down by summer. Of course, if we were supplying ourselves, the cost would be net very little as the revenues would circulate inside our economy instead of heading into other sovereign pockets first.
Ahhh, yes. But we didn't just start talking about offshore oil drilling. We didn't just start talking about drilling in ANWR. The XL pipeline is something relatively recent.
The point is, we've been hearing this line of reasoning for at least 20 years now.
Next year will be here before you know it. Look how fast this year got here.