The Only Cure For High Oil Prices

From Mark Perry and IBD:

But to hold U.S. companies responsible for the surge in gasoline prices is nonsensical. After all, the main contributor to gasoline prices is the cost of world crude oil, which alone makes up 70% of pump prices, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

As for the charge that oil companies have been driving up prices, consider that U.S. refiners that produce gasoline, diesel and jet fuel are reeling from the impact of high world crude prices. Some actually lost money in the first quarter of this year.

World oil prices might be expected to decline if there was more spare oil-production capacity. But control of world oil prices is not in the hands of investor-owned oil companies in the U.S.; those companies control just 6% of worldwide oil reserves, while national oil companies of foreign governments own 80% of the world's oil reserves.

Even if the control of oil prices were in American hands, which it is not, we would still face the fact that Congress refuses to allow access to plentiful oil and natural gas deposits beneath federal lands and U.S. coastal waters.

It's hard for our government to ask the main oil-producing foreign countries to increase their production when 85% of the U.S. outer continental shelf and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are closed to domestic energy production.
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Congress will never admit this is a problem they helped create. Instead they will continue to finger point and find fault with Big Oil.