The Petroleum Reserve is an anachronism now. We are totally self sufficient in oil insofar as some cutoff of foreign oil goes. It is all there in the ground where we can go and get it and the cost of extraction continues to decline and will continue to decline. Right now 60 dollar oil floods the market with American oil. In the not terribly distant future it will be $40 and then $30.
You are totally wrong. No one can economically produce oil at less than $50, and extraction costs have fallen only because drilling stopped when oil dropped below the cost of finding it. What is being talked about is not full-cycle oil economics. Sure, if you have an existing field you might be able to drill a new well and extract oil at $50, but you will not be covering the cost of finding new production areas, and due to constant production declines you must ALWAYS be looking for new production. Nobody in the shale oil fields is making money. They survive by selling more stock and diluting your investment just to have the capital to continue drilling. I like inexpensive gasoline as much as the next guy, but all $30-$40 oil will do is insure that $130 oil will pop up again in the near future as no one will seek out new production at these low prices.