re: #279 Spare O’Lake

3. Explain to me why America cannot reduce its imports of oil from ME sources immediately and offset those reductions by temporarily increasing its imports from non-ME sources until alternate non-oil sources can be developed.

Oil is fungible, but it is not entirely identical. If it costs more to develop and process heavy oil from the Canadian tar sands into gasoline than it does to import light sweet crude from Saudi for our refineries, then the invisible hand of the free market is going to save money and buy oil from the ME. Now if you want the US to nationalize the oil industry, we can discuss your inefficient mandate. Otherwise, it is best to cut back on using oil entirely, instead of paying more to buy from less threatening but still inefficient foreign producers.