Thread: Are Republicans advocating for nationalization of our oil?

Here in California we've been paying upwards of $4.00 a gallon for gasoline. It's ridiculous how much they've increased in a matter of weeks and I'm pretty sure the recent increases in the price of oil on the WORLD market has had something to do with it among other factors.


Okay so here's what I don't understand and help me if I'm wrong or missing key points. Many proponents of increased drilling say that we need to do this in order to provide this country with much needed oil. But here's the thing. We have not nationalized our oil resources nor do we have a state-owned oil company that we can just ask for more oil. That would be Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mexico, Venezuela. We have privately owned international companies such as Exxon and BP drilling the oil on our shores. This oil ends up being sold on the world market which consists of not only the U.S. but China, Europe, Brazil, India. Private oil companies are under no obligation to sell the oil they drill here at home exclusively to us. They'll sell to the highest bidder whether that be American refineries or Chinese refineries.


Am I right in assuming that many of the proponents feel that if we allow more drilling here at home, that the oil will be ours to keep, thus in essence nationalizing our oil, and that it will not go elsewhere like China?

I have mixed feelings on this issue while I believe in capitalism as the only correct method but without love of country, values, morals, capitalism can and will fail. The oil companies as most large corporations only look at the dollar to guide them. The question is how to make a company do the right thing for America.?

The oil business is a monopoly since we have no substitute at this point what I would like to see is drilling expanded everywhere in the USA then cap and save as reserves, oil prices will then drop by 50% over night but again the question is how to "convince" this administration and the oil industry to do the right thing.

Anyone have an answer?

Am I right in assuming that many of the proponents feel that if we allow more drilling here at home, that the oil will be ours to keep, thus in essence nationalizing our oil, and that it will not go elsewhere like China?

Personally, I don't think it matters how much oil we get out of the ground here in the United States. While this is not my field of knowledge, I still think greed will dictate that whoever controls the oil will export the bulk of it to maxamize profits. I don't even think the Keystone Pipeline would have helped our gas situation because the pipeline was running all the was to Texas and most of it probably would have been exported through the Gulf. I believe gas is selling for over $8.00 a gallon in Europe right now. Even when considering the cost of shipping, oil companies still stand to profit more by selling to other parts of the world. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe our refineries are running at full capacity as we speak. What we need, IMHO, is more refineries and laws to better control speculation. It's a very complicated issue to understand, especially for folks like me.

You are both right. Capitalism is most likely the best way to go. Reinvestment of profits and outside investment allows the private industry to create the technical know-how to extract oil from harder to reach places, something the nationalized industry is not able to do simply because the owner, the government, uses the profit from oil for other things. That and the inevitable politics and corruption that would come into play in government owned oil.


MW, last I heard we are now a next exporter of gasoline. If refineries are running at full capacity and there is relatively low demand at home and high demand outside, they're going to ship the gasoline wherever they can without having to lower prices. And the pipeline will just facilitate the exportation of Canadian oil to China and elsewhere. It will not have any significant impact on oil prices as the increase in supply would still not be able to meet the rising demand in both China and India.


I do think the administration has it right when it says we need to look past oil and look for alternative energy. Oil is not going to last us forever. But that's a long term strategy. Right now we need immediate action so we need those laws you talk about. Speculation seems to be what's been really affecting the prices as of late. We need to clamp down on it and only allow the legitimate use of hedging by the industries that ACTUALLY deal in oil or depend on it for its operations. It doesn't seem like the administration nor the Congress have any real solutions to this problem though.