Why cant we just tap into the oil reserves we have in america.?

you would think that with the reserves we have we could tap in to atleast ONE of them, right? well i guess im just wishful thinking. it seems to me that the people who can make that decision are so rich they dont mind paying 4 dollars a gallon for gas.Why cant we just tap into the oil reserves we have in america.?
Politics. If we did the price of oil would go down and the dems might lose the strangle hold they long for. It is the same reason we can't take the tax off of gas. We can't drill in ANWAR. We can't drill off-shore and the Carter era made it darn near impossible for small refineries to survive or new ones to be built. We could really take control if we had the stones to do so.Why cant we just tap into the oil reserves we have in america.?
When you say tap into the reserves we have, I'll assume you mean the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that the federal government operates... and thats only for states of extreme emergency (like nuclear war stopping the country/world in its tracks for years).





In terms of exploring for oil, it is thought that the U.S. has much oil offshore... Alaska is thought to have some too, but its more of a crapshoot.





Currently, we are only able to use about 1/3 of the total oil in a given well, because we don't have the technology to harness the rest. However, higher oil prices will do two things:


1) entice the producers to develop ways to harvest the remaining amount in the ground


2) force others to provide cheaper ways to substitute for oil.





These are, of course, more longer term solutions.





Adjusted for inflation, oil is about as much today as it was in 1981.





What really needs to be done is to stop the dollar from declining too much. Oil is priced in dollars, and with most foreign currencies being stronger than the dollar, they can buy more oil, thus increasing worldwide demand and price.





Alot of this runup has to do with inflation.
It wouldn't matter very much if we did really. There is something to the tune of 25 million gallons of oil in our reserves in the US- that is what our country consumes in a day or less. It might lower prices by a couple of cents for a day or so, but really it wouldn't make very much of a difference to anyone's pockets.





As it stands, the oil crisis seems to be an economic anomaly- as a country we are consuming less oil than we have in the past couple of years, yet the prices keeps rising. Normally when this happens, the prices lower.


It really is just because its a necessity right now in our culture. Everything is based around it. And when you think about it, places in Europe like France, England, Germany...they've been paying 7+ dollars per liter for many years now.
The people who have demanded that we do not drill for oil are environmentalists and the politicians that are in their pocket have restricted drilling with federal laws,the oil companies(and I) would love to expand domestic oil production. Did you know that the Chinese are drilling for oil right off of our coasts in areas that our congress says that we must not due to environmental impact?
The only reserves that I am aware of are in Alaska, which is SUPER protected by wildlife and conservation laws. I think we do some drilling up there, but not much. Every time someone tries to do something about it they get knocked back.
Alaska is the only one providing so far. They just found huge oil reserves off the coast of Brazil and south america so hopefully in the long run this will help lower gas prices