Oil, oil everywhere

The government estimated Thursday that up to 4.3 billion barrels of oil can be recovered from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota and Montana, using current technology. You can read more about this finding at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24057222/from/ET/. It's bad enough that gas prices will reach almost $4.00 a gallon by June, but the real kicker here is that we have access to oil reserves right here in the United States, namely in ANWR, the four corner states, off of the coasts of California, Florida, and the Gulf of Mexico. What's even more ridiculos is that China drills off of US shores in international waters, but the US cannot. Our government does not possess the political will to repeal the laws that have this country "literally over the barrel". By all means we should actively search for alternative energy sources, but until we can fully develop and implement them, we need to explore sites that have been off limits for 25 years or more. In addition, we need to build more refineries to process any oil that is found. The US currently operates at 110% capacity of the refineries it has in operation. Disrupting any one of them, i.e., off the Gulf Coast as a result of Hurrican Katrina will only lead to shortages in supply. Technology is so advanced at this point that the size of the ecological foot print we would leave in the ANWR or Gulf Coast is minimal and worth the risk. Otherwise, as demad soars and world-supply dwindles consumers in the US continue to pay.