Do you have a source? While I'm not positive that we may not have domestic wells capped, what I have read indicates that our policy with OPEC and specifically Saudi is based more on extracting as much oil from fields that we paid to develop. Which certainly makes sense.
Get as much out of sunk cost and hold domestic sources for an emergency. However, the exploration and development costs of ANWR would be extremely high in comparison to sources currently available.
No?
Back when I was working for, gasp, Halliburton, in 1998, approx. 30% of Texas land rigs were idle and about 20% of offshore. costs for deep recovery of reserves was prohibitive because at that time oil was about 10 bucks a barrel. As to ANWR it has already been geologically mapped and much of the infrastructure is in place with the pipeline and equipment available from the North Slope fields. You have to remember that in the beginning the Saudi fields were called "gravity flow" fields meaning that the reserves were so close to the surface that very little drilling was required. Those days are long gone now. Their remaining reserves are as deep and expensive to exploit as ours. The cost/benefit of ME oil is about to tip towards domestic resources regardless of war or peace. The US has had very little to do in the ME as far as production and refining is concerned in the last 15 years. The big presence in the ME are the Japanese, Brits, Koreans, Germans and French. The Us market shifted to the Pacific Rim, and Central and South America, Australia and to some extent Canada in the 90’s.