Threatening OPEC with legal action ignores the fact that the U.S. imports around 6 million barrels per day of oil from OPEC, more than the U.S. produces itself. Nobody outside OPEC has spare production capacity. If OPEC members get ticked off with the U.S., they could just shut off exports and bring the U.S. economy to a screeching halt. A lot of OPEC countries are less than friendly with the U.S., so if push came to shove, they just might do that.

Remember 1973? The Arab oil producers embargoed the U.S. and precipitated the first oil crisis. Gasoline stations ran out and prices quadrupled practically overnight.

Nowadays, U.S. oil production is about half of what it was in 1973, and consumption is much higher. The U.S. imports over 2/3 of its oil and much of its gasoline and diesel fuel. If all the OPEC producers, Arab and non-Arab, pulled the plug, it could be way, way worse than 1973.

Businesses don't make money by being pissy with their customers. It don't matter what the customer thinks of them, does to them, or threatens them with - a good successful business makes money by offering the best price and staying neutral.

Despite what the world thinks, OPEC isn't the only game in town, the US doesn't depend on them exclusively, and we do have options - if push came to shove. OPEC knows this, the US knows this, and so does the rest of the world. Which is why they'll stay neutral and so will we.

And what makes you think it isn't going to happen with OPEC. With the mess that's over there now, it's highly unlikely that the oil will flow forever. And why isn't our government getting serious aboutwind and solar energy? There have been ways to stop the use of oil around for years. Everytime something comes close, big oil buys it out and shelves it. Get real man. Bush and Cheney are big oil. They receive monies from the oil corps. Blind Trusts. You know what that is? Investments made by someone else without the investor's knowledge. And yes there is a ton of land available to build huge homes in the Florida Everglades. One acre will cost you $100.00. Send me a check and I'll send you a deed.

Maybe we'd be better off if OPEC shut the spigot. Then we'd be forced to find alternative energy. Do you know there is an inventor who has invented a car that runs on compressed air. You know compressed air doesn't cost anything thereby making it null and void by especially Bush and Cheney./

I sell equipment some of it driven by compressed air. Compressed air is the least efficient and most expensive way to run the equipment

"Businesses don't make money by being pissy with their customers."

Correction--businesses in a competitive market don't make money by being pissy with their customers. Monopolies in a high-demand industry can be pissy with their customers all they want. OPEC isn't the only game in town? What game do you prefer--Russia? OPEC countries account for more than 40% of all oil production, and 2/3 of all known oil reserves. Currently 95% of all US transportation is based on oil.

So, where's this other game?

I think Canada holds alot of oil.

Point 1: These are not businesses, they are countries. Point 2: Customer satisfaction does not rank high on their priority list. Most of these governments have little else except oil to support their spending habits, and they feel they should get the highest possible price for it. That's what what governments usually believe about revenues, and it's what OPEC is all about.

They'll stay neutral if the U.S. stays neutral, if not, probably they'll become hostile. And they are sitting on most of the world's oil, which means they can make trouble if they want to.

Actually, the area I am in has had to impose a moratorium on new wind generators because there is a fundamental problem - If you have too many of them, they destabilize the power grid. If there is no wind, they don't generate electricity. People don't expect their air conditioning and lights to go out just because there's no wind. Similarly, on cloudy days solar cells don't generate electricity. And then there are those windless, cloudy days in which nothing works.

And as for compressed air - how did you compress that air? Air doesn't compress itself, you have to put power into a compressor to make it happen. Where did you get that power?

Canada does indeed have a lot of oil, in the form of oil sands, and is putting it on production as fast as possible. The problem is that Canada does not have very many people, especially in the areas where the mines are. Unemployment rates in the oil producing provinces are already down to the lowest levels in 100 years just doing the current developments. Expanding any faster is impossible due to labor shortages.

There's an additional problem in that Canada is both an exporter and importer of oil. It exports oil to the U.S. from its Western provinces and imports oil from OPEC into its Eastern provinces. A lot of the OPEC oil imported into Eastern Canada is refined into gasoline and diesel for the U.S. market, since the U.S. does not have enough refinery capacity to supply itself. OPEC knows this, so if they embargoed the U.S., they would also embargo Canada. That way, they could turn a 6 million barrel per day shortfall into a 7 million barrel per day shortfall.

When they defeated Richard Nixon and forced him to resign. With Nixon gone, was ended the real attempt to be energy independent. Nixon wanted to replace all our coal & oil electrical generators with hydro and nuclear, but ' they ' cancelled the building of new nuclear generators, and stopped building damns, in 1974 as soon as Nixon was driven out of office.

1974, The begginning of the End of Broad Based Prosperity in the USA....in fact the beginning of the greatest depression since the '30s, lasting untill 1985. The arrival of the "homeless" in America as a permenent fixture. The beginning of the end of the power of Labor Unions and working people, the dismantling of the New Deal, Outsourcing, the Rust Belt, import of vast numbers of illegals destroying/replacing American lower class....

It has a stupid farmer/actor talking about how nice it would be to plant a crop that would provide the energy to plant the next crop.