It’s time to send OPEC a message

Now for a while I have railed against the loony left in this country because they have made us more dependent on foreign oil and more dependent on foreign refined gasoline.  We don’t have the refining capacity in this country to meet the demand we have and our economy is paying for it.

I think that it is time to send a message to OPEC; it is time that we start telling OPEC countries to either increase their output to help us meet our demand and lower the price or we’ll stop importing.  I know it sounds like a hollow threat but if we actually followed through with it the move would insure adequate supply for many years to come and here’s how.

We import roughly 5.5 million barrels of oil per day from OPEC countries, 1.4 million barrels from Venezuela.  First we stop importing anything from Venezuela, and we tell the remaining OPEC countries that they will be increasing production to make up the difference of what we don’t import from Venezuela.  If they refuse then we will cease all oil imports from Algeria, Angola, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, and Qatar.  They will view this as a move to break up OPEC, which it is, and refuse.  This leaves us importing oil from Iraq and Saudi Arabia, Iraq needs to finance their country’s future so they will not be able to do much except increase their production to as high a level as they can.  Saudi Arabia is in the difficult position.  They are the largest OPEC exporter to the US, but they will be fighting the remaining OPEC countries who want to make the deal so they can get back into the good graces of the world’s largest oil customer.  These are smaller countries and they can’t afford a standoff like this.

 

Now in the unlikely event that no one steps up to replace the 4 million barrels per day we release that amount from the strategic oil reserve.  We currently have 698 million barrels in the strategic oil reserves and much of it was purchased at high prices so releasing it at these levels is not a bad thing because it can be replaced at lower prices when this is over.  We could go for six months at those levels if we needed to but in reality it probably won’t take more than a few weeks and the price will be back down in the $40 range.

Now once OPEC comes to its senses and gets tired of losing money we’ll start importing from them again except for Venezuela.  It is clear that Venezuela doesn’t have much respect for its biggest customer so we’ll go elsewhere.
Along with these steps it’s time for the Executive Branch of government to stand up lead and stop acting like a castrated puppy. 

Oil is our nation’s economy, it is our national security.  The President needs to direct by executive order that we do everything possible to explore and extract oil from any federal lands that have it.  In addition we will open up drilling off our coasts, if congress and the states don’t like it too bad.  This is a national security issue and the President is charged with protecting the nation’s security, not the legislative branch, not the judicial branch.  While they may try to interfere they should be ignored since neither has the constitutional standing to do anything about it.

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