A theory I have, is the US is intent on paying what seems to be expensive prices today, buying overseas, to save our own hemisphere stocks for later. Smart plan, and allows for a very large strategic oil reserve.
This is like me eating my sisters lunch first, then mine. The other way around, I always had to eat my food really fast, and I’d only get about half of hers.
What you're saying is unofficial policy according to what I've read.
There is another thing to consider also. If we don’t buy up all the oil we need in the middle east, someone else will. As long as we are a big customer of middle eastern oil, we have some control over the middle east economy, and therefore can influence their governments. The threat of drilling our own oil gives us that influence. But once we follow through with that threat, there is no longer anything to barter with.
I'm glad someone else has finally made that observation.
"Save" for what? "Peak Oil" is total nonsense. Most of the oil on this planet has nothing to do with "fossils" or dinasaurs, but is produced by the Earth herself. Man is finding larger pools of oil every year. I don't believe we could ever use the vast amounts of oil that exist under land and sea. But here we sit not grabbing it, accepting the machinations of both environmental wackos and the oil industry that guarantee inflated prices, all so we can send $1 billion per day out of this country and enrich our most mortal enemies. It is pure insanity. Ethanol is a sick joke. The world is an oil economy. We need to find and produce massive new oil to fuel it.
That would be a good play if we were already building the capacity. By saving everything untouched in the ground even a crash balls-to-the-wall national war effort would not get the oil out of the Gulf or ANWR very quickly. It would still be years. There would be some credibility to the notion if we were removing all the unnecessary hoops and expenses for Nuke plants and building new or converting plants for coal.