“If more of our energy sources were obtained right here at home, for both the transportation and the electrical sectors, it would certainly remove a lot of the speculation that drives the markets”
Why do you believe this? The market for petroleum is international and not even remotely regulated. The price will be whatever an unregulated, supra-national market says it will be. Whether it comes out of the ground and is refined here or not won’t make any difference there, unless of course we decide that our petroleum is a vital national resource and forbid international trading or selling of it except in regulated markets of some sort.
P-40, do you think that a crowd which has handed our sovereignty over to business interests will for one minute really interfere in unrestrained global speculation in petroleum? Of course they won’t. In fact, they will continue to subsidize it with your money and mine!
As one of the heaviest consumers of petroleum products, we drive a lot of speculation in the markets. Any suspected disruption in those markets will cause prices to rise just on the U.S. response alone.
A lot of those same business interests are working to create some degree of energy independence here at home...so I don’t think we have been entirely sold down the river yet.