It seems to me that congress should have stated acting on this pronto, but partisan politics in the Senate is keeping us under the thumbs of the Arab Royals and having to tip toe around them to keep the oil flowing.
We need immediate action for the good of the nation from our representatives, not politics! My God, you would think they would KNOW this!
It is all about money and power though, not the good of the country.
BUT WHAT ABOUT that oil? If push comes to shove can we do without it? Not a chance. America consumes almost 19 million barrels of oil every day, and produces fewer than 8 million. The balance comes from overseas suppliers, with Canada and Saudi Arabia each providing some 15 percent of our imports, Venezuela 14 percent, Mexico 11 percent, Nigeria about 8 percent, and Iraq about 6 percent.We are, it should be noted, dependent not only on those countries from which we buy oil directly. Oil is a fungible product, and a shutdown of production in any country, even one from which we buy little oil, will affect the price we pay our own suppliers.
It also leaves us with one overriding strategic imperative: We must make clear that in the event of an upheaval in Saudi Arabia, we will take control of, protect, and run the kingdom's oil fields, which American oil companies originally developed after paying substantial sums for the right to do so. This may be a difficult policy to defend in the post-imperialist era, but that doesn't make planning for this contingency any less necessary. Our State Department is creative; surely, if called upon, it would be able to figure out an arrangement for operating the oilfields that would safeguard our supply and win the blessing of a revenue-hungry regime with a stake in the continued flow of oil. And surely such a regime, if it did not exist, could be invented.
For an immediate solution this makes sense to me.
Bump!