To keep gas at $2.50 a gallon the US government would have to buy gas at that rate - a US government subsidy of the difference between market rate and $2.50. Currently that's $1.50 per gallon (diesel). Alternatively, the US government would have to produce their own supply, such as in the ANWR, and make it available for less than market rate (what China or India would pay for the production). Billions of dollars of government subsidies and/or nationalization of oil production - does anyone think that either proposal has some deliciously sweet irony behind it? Be careful what you wish for, because someday you may surely get it.

Because you know that Exxon or Imperial Oil isn't going to sell ANWR production solely to the US and solely for a discount - not without an additional subsidy to make up the difference between $2.50 and what they could be paid for it (or for what it costs to extract - ANWR is no cakewalk). This of course would be on top of their billions of dollars annual of US government subsidies, recently renewed. I don't think increasing US production via ANWR would have more than an incremental impact on gasoline prices, because it would have only an incremental impact on the global oil supply. Because its the global oil market that ANWR would produce for, and the global market that the US market *always* purchases from. True since the advent of OPEC. And who always will have the money to bid up and buy the ANWR production on an open market? China - thanks to a couple decades of trade imbalances in their favor, Americans buying up their consumer goods production. Chinese goods, moved off the ships and around America by those O/O truckers who are now protesting the high cost of diesel gasoline. I sympathize, my brothers.

We have met the enemy, and he is us...