It is often forgotten that oil is the main feedstock for fertilizer, fibers, pharmaceuticals, rubber, plastics, paints and thousands of other necessities. A $150 barrel of offshore or ANWR oil will be worth $2000 in 20 or 30 years. It is a form of fatal insanity to produce this oil today and burn it in Hummers, rather than leave in the ground for absolute necessities in 50 years. (Correction: Oil cannot be produced, pineapples and paper clips are produced. Oil is mined, and every mine or oil field is eventually exhausted.)

You are a typical DEMBHOLE-DOUCHESBAG who knows nothing about the commodities of oil/gas['cept maybe the gaseous eminations that come from your mouth and other orifices!!!] If you would have fact checked what you spewed instead of quoting DEMBHOLE 'PLATITUDES' - even a lower form such as yourself would have realized that A) DEMBHOLES are responsible for this 'congressional moratorium' on drilling B) DEMBHOLES are responsible for a greater % tax on domestic oil C) GEORGE BUSH(the father) was responsible for issuing a presidential writ upholding a ban on domestic drilling D) OIL/GAS will decrease when 'new' sorces of oil/gas are initiated AND E) IF YOU WERE TO LOOK/INVESTIGATE THE 'PUT' CONTRACTS IN OIL FOR THE PAST 8 MONTHS YOU WILL FIND/DISCOVER THE NAMES OF THE FELON SOROS, [THE ALMOST FELON THREE TIMES] BUFFET, GOLDMAN-SUCKS AND ENTITIES UNDER THEIR DIVERSE UMBRELLA 'FIXING' NOT ONLY OIL/GAS FUTURES BUT GOLD/MONEY ARBITRAGE MARKETS!!! As these are all LEFTY-^SSHOLES betting against the UNITED STATES - it is not too hard too figure even for one as devolved in sentient thought as yourself 'who/whom' really wants higher oil/gas prices and for AMERICA to fail in the capitalist mode???!!!

When I heat the house, and the price of natural gas is getting high, I just start burning the furniture!

Works for me. Now you may think I'm really short-sighted, because, after all, what am I going go eat off of, or sit on or sleep in?

Every heard of a FLOOR, douchebag? You @@##KING LEFTIST $#@%BAGS need an education!

Even with trillions of barrels of new oil flowing into or around the country, how you gonna refine it into gasoline? Our refineries are running at capacity, we haven't built a new refinery in more than two decades, and getting a new one approved and built might take all of another one. No, we simply must face it: we gotta dump our gas guzzlers, use mass transit, ride our bikes, and get off our BUTTS and walk more! Our grandfathers did it (and lived long lives, absent cigarette smoke), and most places were farther then from most other places. And there is the other shoe: we seriously need to stop building cities all over our landscape, gobbling up precious productive farmland in the process. Our land use policies are a joke, a sham, and another disaster. This is where "property rights" become property WRONGS!! So wake up, and smell the exhaust.

The State makes more profit from the sale and use of oil by taxation than the oil industry. The State's attention is towards consumption not the benefit of consumer. Government is the problem, not the solution.

It is more realisic to speculate that the oil reserves within the United States have been "environmentally off limits" because the resources have already been pledged as collateral for debts of the State. Why else would other powers invest billions into crashing dollars?

One thing is for sure. Utopian dreamers for the return of inexensive oil should prepare for one ugly wake-up call. Only a fool would expect Obama/government to solve the problem it's actions have created.

"You know, junkies find veins in their toes when those in their arms collapse.”

Al Gore was right.

Offshore drilling, ANWAR, it's all the same thing.

I mean, why worry about fifty years from now when we could be making money today? If our grandchildren aren't tough enough or smart enough to figure it out, well - screw them!

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If our grandchildren can't find a different energy source years from now, then shame on them!!!!

Let's see...the Saudi's pump about 9.45 billion barrels of oil a day and if we drill in Alaska and the continental shelf thsoe two areas will yield about 30 billion gallons? In my book that accounts for less than four days of drilling that the Saudi's already produce...less than a drop in the proverbial bucket! Like a lot of things that were supposed to improve with the help of this administration - too little and way, way too late!

I am persuaded that offshore drilling in the US will do little to reduce gas prices, and this oil would come on the market only years from now. But there are two points that get little attention.

1- we need gas prices to rise, not to fall. This is the only way to persuade our economy to be less profligate with oil. The current difficulty is due to the sharp RATE of increase. We cannot change the nation's automobile fleet in a couple of months. If gas prices had been significantly higher all along, most people would own more economical cars, and we even might have more public transportation.

2- On the other hand, the environmental argument against offshore drilling smacks of sanctimonious hypocrisy. Looking behind the cloak of righteousness, is the expectation that offshore drilling will take place abroad, e.g. Nigeria. Exporting pollution to third world countries is not a noble pursuit.

Aside from the article's well-placed thoughts, politicians had better start realizing that petroleum is at this point far too precious to burn. Air pollution and global climate change aside (and those are huge asides), the modern world arguably has depended on oil not just for cheap energy but for all manner of petrochemicals, some of them vital to our current level of technology.

The plastics industry, for example, could still survive up to a point by making corn-based alternatives (assuming the corn itself isn't being turned into expensive fuel). But there are some non-burn uses of petroleum products that are at this point impossible or impossibly expensive to replace. We can conserve, we can recycle and we can be a lot more careful about how we use these chemicals, but it's hard to imagine our current technology surviving without some of these products. So burning up what's left of the world's oil reserves is doubly foolish.