You think gas is expensive in the US?

Shouldn't be so quick to judge other countries. Most vehicles in that part of the world use diesel and are more fuel efficient, you're really talking apples and oranges. Also, in the UK, cars on the whole are smaller and lighter. Scooters and moto's are also much more popular and get 60+ miles to the gallon (er, liter). The mass transit is better over there as well.

Shouldn't be so quick to judge other countries. Most vehicles in that part of the world use diesel and are more fuel efficient, you're really talking apples and oranges. Also, in the UK, cars on the whole are smaller and lighter. Scooters and moto's are also much more popular and get 60+ miles to the gallon (er, liter). The mass transit is better over there as well.

In America though, you have more freedom to move about the country. Assuming you have a good working car, you can get into it and literally go anywhere in the country (negating Alaska and Hawaii).

If you have the time there is no reason you can't drive to Alaska.

I mis-read that and tried to drive to Hawaii

I mis-read that and tried to drive to Hawaii

In America though, you have more freedom to move about the country. Assuming you have a good working car, you can get into it and literally go anywhere in the country (negating Alaska and Hawaii). In England or Europe, it's much more difficult to do that if you only have one family car or have to rely solely on public transportation.

I'm use to TP crowd and libs who nitpick everything so that caveats of the post:
1. Yes, I realize that you can travel by car to many countries in Europe. But, language barriers and different country customs and what not limit you. Also, when you're paying $9 a gallon, you're less likely to travel far from home and just like when we're paying $4 per gallon here in the US.
2. This is not a "freedom" issue in the Ron Paul or libertarian sense. It's just more of a general sense of the word "freedom". Like Credit Cards give me the freedom to buy as much as I want without having to carry around a wallet full of cash that can get lost/stolen. With a car, you have options to go places that public transportation doesn't necessarily give you.
3. America has a good car culture. We have three major auto makers here with many foreigns that build with American workers as well.
4. We have our own oil and the refining capacity to handle our auto use (we actually are a net EXPORTER of gas believe it or not).

A lot of people want us to "be like Europe" in certain senses, but they don't realize what makes us uniquely American probably because they've never actually been to those parts of the world. It's easy to pick and choose the highlights of every country and wonder why America can't be more like that. People want all of the good and ignore all of the bad.

And sometimes the extraction is so expensive that unless oil is sitting at $80, $90 or more dollars per barrel, it's not economically profitable to extract the oil. I have similar friends that weren't roughnecks but rather the geologists that sit at Chevron and Exxon. A lot of their projects were not going to go live unless oil hit a certain price on the market because they would be net losers.

If it's going to cost $100 million in labor and capital to extract $80 million dollars in oil, only in Obamaville is that an awesome investment.

If everything you say is true, Obama can just wave his magic wand since no President has been more pro-oil than him (or whatever garbage he says about his administration taking credit for Bush era policies) and oil produces would precipitously decline to levels they were when he was inaugurated, right? Or, did America get a crash course on how oil works on the global market since Bush left office and we can't use the convenient excuse that he's just paying off his oil buddies?

As I clearly stated, I was discussing the times when there would be a profit but not as big a profit as the producer wants to make so they cap the well and wait for prices to increase.

The US used way more fuel than it produced up until this year basically. Most Europeans/English I know are much more well traveled than most Americans know, your statement about them not being able to travel as easily is just ignorant. You seem to suggest that every American has 2 cars. What makes us uniquely American is out selfishness. America has the freedom to drive 1/4 mile to the store instead of walk, that's about it.

Just like I'm sure you own investments, you're free to buy and sell as you please. Are they not allowed to extract the oil as they see fit?

Just like I'm sure you own investments, you're free to buy and sell as you please. Are they not allowed to extract the oil as they see fit?

Quit trying to imply that I'm saying something I'm not. What they're doing is not illegal. I simply said (in the first post you quoted) that they're sitting on oil that is profitable while complaining that the only oil left in the US is in the national parks because they know they can make a bigger profit on some of the oil reserves in the national parks. It's all a PR campaign to try to get to the easier, more profitable oil.