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[I didn’t claim any of it. All I said is that US had the capacity to produce own oil and no Saddam’s actions could actually push the oil price too high to become unbearable.]

So your argument is that when the number of major independent Gulf oil producers goes down from 5 to 1 due to Saddam’s unification of the Arabian peninsula under his rule, the oil price won’t change significantly? OPEC’s not even a single country, and the moment they got organized, oil prices quadrupled.

As to the US having oil, it makes no difference. “The US” doesn’t have oil. Individual mineral rights owners and oil companies have oil. Consumers pay every penny of price increases, which is why presidents get upset when oil prices increase. US companies produce every barrel they can at prevailing prices. The only reason they are showing record production at these price levels is because large numbers of companies went bankrupt and have liquidated their capital equipment at pennies on the dollar. Investors lost billions. Once that capital equipment is worn out, it will have to be replaced with non fire sale equipment and production will drop again, as production costs begin to exceed prices.