We were discussing the recent irresponsibility you termed a "revolt", and I pointed out was business as usual. "The Reps" are at fault for it, and none of "the Reps" involved have both comprehension and concern for governance of the country. She notes elsewhere thtat OPEC is a cartel, controls 3/4 of the known oil reserves, and adjusts its output to maximise profit. So you can't get "more oil" at all, let alone right now (which is ridiculous), by selling the US sequestered areas for cheap in a panic. So drill somewhere else. The "domestic" nature of the reserves is irrelevant, and there are plenty of undrilled reserves already available all over the planet. The current sequestered US reserves would affect the world price by about 4% starting about ten years from now - we could do better than that by keeping our car tires at proper inflation starting now, in the US. I think somebody already pointed that out.
Not that Obama idiocy! To gain the 4% you need to have grossly underinflated tires to begin with. Since most people already inflate their tires to approximately the correct level, handing out tire gauges isn't going to save anywhere near 4%. Of course, what Obama said was even worse. He said we could save "just as much" oil by properly inflating our tires as is available in all the areas where drilling is currently banned. He even repeated "just as much". If you run the numbers, it would take 11,000 years of proper tire inflation to equal the estimated untapped domestic reserves. Why must they be sold "on the cheap". I heard a guy the other day suggesting they alter the new leases so that states get a share of the revenues. This would give them an incentive to open up their states to offshore drilling.
A very high proportion of cars on the road have underinflated tires. Look for yourself. Excellent question. That's not what he said, and: I doubt very much whether running the numbers on what he actually said - its meaning in context - would yield any such conclusion. For starters, he was talking about oil refined and added to the US domestic gasoline consumption in cars - the big noise started with gas prices at the pump, no? - so you are talking about the percentage gain in US domestic supply from adding these areas to the world oil market. Then you factor in the immediate and continual savings from the tire inflation and other mentioned practices, and discount the supply improvement by the decades delays and time limited delivery. That's if you're running the numbers. Republican campaign flacks are notoriously lousy at running numbers - any numbers - and notoriously dishonest in their allegations of physical fact, so my guess is they haven't actually run the honest numbers, and are lying about the numbers they have run. And since you seem to get all your information from such people, my guess is that the "11,000 year" allegation is crap. But prove me wrong. Run the numbers right here - this is a science forum. How much money would an average US car owner save on gas over their driving lifetime starting now, by selling the drilling rights to the entire US oil reserve at the current prices (we can use Colombia or Nigeria for estimation - Iraq would be more to the point but a special case of grand theft) to multinational oil companies, vs keeping their tires at ideal pressure and so forth as mentioned by Obama ? Remember to discount for time, allow for OPEC cartel behavior, and assume inelasticity of demand.
It doesn't require complex analysis to realize that US reserves are more expensive to exploit than many others that are already developed. "Drill Here/Now, Pay Less" (as the right-wing punditry has been chanting lately) is just another desperate USAmerican delusion.
