'BECAUSE OF THE COMMUNISTS ("DEMOCRATS")

I don't want us to use our reserves either. They are NOT of infinite size. When the US Oil is gone, it is gone. So too from the world stage will we be also.

Yeah I am sorry the oil rig and shale gas guys have to go back to school and learn computer programing or car design and CAD or something. Maybe one will design a better car.

Our big problem was GM/Ford et al climbing into bed with the gas guys with White House approval after WW2. Bigger and badder engines were to keep America moving. Highways were built, urban sprawl was ordered. No one except the kids asked, what happens when the oil runs out? They didn't ask because as long as abundance continued through the 70s, why would those 1950s decision makers care? They knew old age and their death would be in or by those years so why would they care? And they didn't.

Frankly some thought we would have conquered the USSR before then, and would have the Siberian stuff to use here. More or less free with only a few billion (mostly non-white, which was acceptable to those bigots in charge back then) dead in the war. Less consumption would mean longer lasting fuel anyway. Yeah there exist actual papers arguing that sitting in Govt. vaults. I have seen them.

Nam you are around long enough to remember the hatred for the Japanese economy cars of the 70s. The hatred was mostly because lower fuel consumption meant big oil would lose money if American car makers suddenly started making smaller engines. By then owning enough voting stock shares of the surviving car companies, big oil was able to slow down (and sometimes simply buy the patent of, then lock it away forever) of better US car engines. Could GM have made a better car back then? Absolutely. But the stockholders voted no. So they didn't. That the primary stockholders were the fuel supply companies was not viewed as a conflict of interest by them.

If the mid-east was collectively smart, they wouldn't sell their oil to us at all. They would build their own refineries and sell it cheaply to Europe and Asia. But those rulers aren't that smart, and they argue, and they are all greedy. Let's here it for inbreeding. :)

NO let them continue to sell to us, buy their harems, jets and villas with swimming pools, build private highways, and all that silliness while their people starve and live in places without running water or 24 hour electric.

Sooner or later their oil will run out and we will still have ours.