Crude Hypochondria - THIS IS A GOOD READ
“Russia is staking underwater claims in the Arctic around the North Pole. China is drilling just off the Florida Keys. The prospect of Chinese slant drilling at the edge of our maritime territory is both bold on their part and embarrassing on ours. With Chinese rigs potentially at the edge of international waters drilling down at an angle to extract from beneath our territorial waters what we refuse to harvest, we may well have settled on smoking to cure our cancer, but just what it is that we are smoking is far from clear.
At any rate, even forgoing OPEC courtship or OPEC threats, accessing our own reserves at home merely addresses supply. And it should be clear that supply is not the cause for the unprecedented - and likely enduring - spike in crude oil prices. Nor is demand. Whether Alaskan oil or Arabian oil, most of the going rate for either remains largely driven by our own market hysteria. Until we can recognize and address that, we will remain in this aspect our own worst enemy, eroding unnecessarily our greatest wartime asset going back through World War II - an unrivaled economic and industrial powerhouse capacity.