Oil Woes
Oil is over $70 a barrel now and this continues to point to several things. The most important of which is that we need to be drilling in the ANWR. Apparently 30% of all US drilled oil comes from the Gulf of Mexico so certainly a little more diversification is in order here. Folks complain about dependence on foreign oil but we certainly want to make sure we are using at least some decent percentage of the oil from foreign lands for the purposes of diversification. Ultimately, we are a little too dependent on other countries still, and we have very marginal refining capacity for our current demand. Hurricane Katrina is having an impact there too as receiving terminals for oil and refineries are being seriously impacted by the storm. In the very short-term, there isn’t much that can be done, but in the long-term we need to be figuring out how to make ourselves more flexible when disasters at home and abroad affect the flow of oil.