[Perfectlap]

I agree for the most part but it sorta reminds me of the ethanol debate.

Some peopel warned that using too much farmland for bio fuels would side track our resources given that ethanol would barely make a dent in our energy needs.

The cost of drilling is almost like sending a man to the moon. Heck might even be more. If we're going to set about pumping more crude from our own backyard you have to have pretty darn good projection on what the return will be given the investment, well the oil company does at least. If those cost go overboard, as they usually do the need to sell that oil at high prices becomes almost mandatory.
Meanwhile a fraction of the price to drill (successfully) in one major site could have put 100,000 hybrid cars on the road, cars that maybe in the future would only need to be filled once a month instead of once a week.

I think technology is our comparative advantage. We can afford given our position to devote more of our resources toward developing FE cars than can our competitors in Asia and perhaps some parts of Europe. China's buying something like 20,000 cars a day while the price of Ford stock is about to fall below a five spot. Rather than dumping billions into Iraq and drilling we need to decide carefully how much of that we're NOT going to pump into "oil price-dependent industries". Otherwise its only a matter of time before GM is filing for bankruptcy while we're dreaming about 2018 crude in ANWAR that will be bought up by the extra 300 million drivers in India and China.