I dunno, this whole oil business stinks. I remember a discussion about the president's strategy regarding drilling and piping the vast reserves from up north somewhere, and how congress poo-pooed the idea right into the ground. I think this is the backlash from the administration.

I know this sounds all conspiracy theory and paranoia, but think about it, we've got a good 25 year + supply of sweet crude sitting on domestic soil just waiting to be had, and the president wants to go after it now to get us off the world market (read OPEC) dependency a little, and right away he is shot down. It's like he gave us two policy choices, in one hand he offers us all the oil we can use, with gas prices at $1.50 or less for at least the next decade, plus wielding a serious club over the other big oil producing nations and buying us a little more time to develop and deploy economically feasible technology which was already planned to be done, and in the other hand he puts us in a position where we become even more dependent on foreign oil, our economy starts going to heck in a decade, and we are going to pay $4.00 a gallon for gas before his term is up. It ain't a big stretch to think that his administration has been subtlely steering us into a "if you don't like my policy, then you are all going to pay" situation. Basically what he's done has had the same effect as telling the enviros he'll let them have their way and see how bad it can really get, especially by doing certain things globally that exacerbate the whole situation. Then when TSHTF he can step back and tell us all how he tried to avoid it but no one wanted to listen.

Yeah, that just seems to far fetched to me...