For a small commission, no doubt

Verbatim Glenn Reynolds, via Atrios:

Of course, if we seized the Saudi and Iranian oil fields and ran the pumps full speed, oil prices would plummet, dictators would be broke, and poor nations would benefit from cheap energy. But we'd be called imperialist oppressors, then.

As Tim Lambert writes, "Yeah, because that's pretty much the way it worked out in Iraq."

Now, there's multiple levels of stupidity going on here, but the most important and salient stupidity is this: The pumps are already at full speed. Anyone who thinks that the Iranians and Saudis aren't pumping at full tilt is a moron. Forget OPEC's statements - if prices were under OPEC's control, they'd still be at $25 a barrel - $30, tops. Until relatively recently (pre-2000), $40 was considered a dangerously destabilizing price for oil. (This was incredibly self-serving of the westerners who decide these things.) Whether you favour structural explanations (Chinese and Indian demand) or more financial ones (western speculation) the fact is at the moment the price is out of Riyadh and Tehran's hands.

More offensive is a sentence quoted by Reynolds, from a Max Boot editorial:

Of the top 14 oil exporters, only one is a well-established liberal democracy — Norway. Two others have recently made a transition to democracy — Mexico and Nigeria. Iraq is trying to follow in their footsteps. That's it. Every other major oil exporter is a dictatorship — and the run-up in oil prices has been a tremendous boon to them.

Memo to Max Boot, from Canada, the UK, and Netherlands (the number 10, 11, and 13 oil exporters): Fuck you too, douchebag. If we bump out the EU from the CIA's rank, then the US is the number 14 exporter, giving us 5 liberal democracies in Boot's odd choice of the top 14. Expanding to the top 20 would include Italy, Australia, Belgium, and South Korea, meaning that almost half of the top 20 exporters would be democratic nations.

(In the interests of fairness, Boot is probably using this chart from the EIA. I have no explanation for why the lists are so different, though I suspect that some of the smaller producers may have dropped off from production decline.)

Somehow, I don't think Boot was really interested in contrary evidence. After all, you can't build a case for counterproductive policies by claiming to be impoverishing Australia.

In the meantime, there are some unilateral steps we can take: Drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Ease restrictions on building new refineries and pipelines. Eliminate the 57-cent-a-gallon tariff on ethanol imports made from Brazilian sugar cane. Increase federal funding for research and rollout of fossil-fuel substitutes such as hydrogen, cellulosic ethanol (produced from grasses and agricultural waste) and plug-in electric engines.

I'm truly amazed at the longevity of ANWR in Republican circles. Honestly. Here's a pristine piece of wilderness that could be ruined by drilling, produce a likely negligible amount of oil (most of which will likely be shipped to Japan anyway), and won't start producing for a decade anyway. And that's if we started drilling today.

It's not actually a mystery, however. The fact is Alaskan oil production is in decline, and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) was a huge expense incurred by the major oil companies. There's an obvious incentive for them to keep TAPS going as long as possible, including drilling ANWR.