> Now, you could be excused for asking yourself: “Wait a second, I thought the U.S. had a bunch of oil in the Permian Basin in Texas and the Bakken Shale in North Dakota. Why the heck are we importing oil?” Turns out the answer is part chemistry and part economics.
> ...
> That’s because they take longer to process and need specialized refining equipment. This cheap, lower-quality crude comes from Canada, Venezuela and Russia, among other spots. Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was the product U.S. refiners were buying.
> “A lot of refineries, especially in the Gulf Coast, made a very expensive bet to invest in this equipment that would allow them to save money on input costs by processing, you know, lower-quality crude,” said Richard Sweeney, an assistant professor of economics at Boston College.
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We can't drill our way out of this because we can't refine the oil that we produce.
Here's another article from 2019 - https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/the-great-oil-p...
> Refiners who invested billions to turn a profit from processing cheap low-quality crude are paying unheard of premiums to find the heavy-sour grades they need. The mismatch is better news for such OPEC producers as Iraq and Saudi Arabia, who don’t produce much light-sweet, but pump plenty of the dirtier stuff.
Saying this doesn't make it true.
https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-452931879750
> The U.S. was producing 11.185 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2021, compared with an average of 11.283 million barrels per day in 2020, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The latest data shows that for the week of March 4, 2022, the U.S. is producing 11.6 million barrels per day.
> While there was a dip in oil production in February 2021 due to winter storms in Texas, said Mark Finley, a fellow in energy and global oil at Rice University in Houston, the U.S. remains the world’s biggest producer of crude oil.
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-science-enviro...
> Approvals for companies to drill for oil and gas on U.S. public lands are on pace this year to reach their highest level since George W. Bush was president, underscoring President Joe Biden’s reluctance to more forcefully curb petroleum production in the face of industry and Republican resistance.
As a deliberate political choice by the Saudis.
https://theintercept.com/2022/02/15/saudi-arabia-gas-price-o...
Also if the president has no effect on gas prices why was ours groveling at the feet of the Saudi Prince?
Because they're the people who can have an effect?
If Biden could tweak gas prices, he wouldn't have to do that.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/24/biden-administration-pausing...
We could drill our away out of this problem, but we are not, because the the biden administration is being held hostage by the progressive left. And before you start calling me a republican, im not one, but this is just a really stupid idea because it's decisions like this that will cause republicans to be elected in 2022 and 2024 - the american public isnt going to take higher gas prices for the team to fight climate change at this point, they are going to vote people into office that will lower them. biden doesnt realize this because he is surrounded by people that think a like and are too rich to be unaffected by inflation, or he doesnt care -- either way, it s a bad position