Should we protect our own oil before talking about drilling more oil?

Question

• S. 2275, Oil Supply Improvement Act - provides that no crude transported over the pipeline right of way be exported.

• H.R. 4007 - reimposes the prohibition on the export of Alaska North Slope crude oil.

• H.R. 4017 - to suspend exports of ANS crude until the President determines the domestic economy is not experiencing a shortage of foreign crude oil or an inflationary impact due to the demand for foreign crude.

Answer 1

If you believe that any of those measures would have any effect you are probably a fool, a liberal, or both.  The market for oil is a world market - if we started using the oil from the Alaskan North Slope rather than exporting it that would simply mean that we would need less oil from another location that we import from.

As a result the supply chain would adjust and the price of crude would stay exactly the same  - whoever normally buys the ANS crude would simply buy from someone else, most likely whoever we stopped buying from when we started using the ANS crude ourselves.

The WHOLE POINT of drilling for more oil is to increase the supply of crude on world markets and bring the price down, or at least stabilize it just as the whole point of conservation and alternative energy measures (which we should adopt along with more drilling) is to decrease demand for oil.  Simply keeping the ANS crude in house does absolutely nothing to increase supply or reduce demand, exposing every one of those resolutions as the empty political gestures that they are.

Please go buy a simple economics textbook.