I believe we have options to lessen the pain of high oil prices such as those bob007 has shown, but I don’t know how much control we have over high oil prices themselves. The market sets these prices, and the market is the world market, not just the market in the US.
Again, going back to the oil well in the backyard scenario. If I have an oil well in my backyard, and my neighbor has a Hummer and complains about the amount of money he is currently spending on gas (assuming he can refine my oil to make gas), he has three choices: He can ask me to sell him my oil for less than the market will give me for my oil (that’s not going to happen, I’m going to sell my oil at the market), he can buy a Prius, or he can just continue driving his Hummer and paying high oil prices hoping the price of oil comes down, and I’ll keep selling my oil to him or the Chinese, whoever pays the market price to me.
Currently, the US is deciding to keep driving that Hummer. If the US decides to drive a Prius, our demand for oil will go down (and the money we export to import oil) and oil prices are likely to decline (how much, who knows?), but if the worldwide demand makes up for this, prices are likely to stay high IMHO.
