For several years after oil started being pumped from Alaska’s North Slope, a good chunk of it never reached the U.S. domestic market; instead, it was exported to Asia. That’s a wee bit of an embarrassment for the folks who claim that we could stop importing oil if we just drilled more.
Apparently Sarah Palin was asked about this at a town hall meeting. Here’s her response.
Oil and coal? Of course, it’s a fungible commodity and they don’t flag, you know, the molecules, where it’s going and where it’s not. But in the sense of the Congress today, they know that there are very, very hungry domestic markets that need that oil first. So, I believe that what Congress is going to do, also, is not to allow the export bans to such a degree that it’s Americans that get stuck to holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here. It’s got to flow into our domestic markets first.
Remember, this is from the person John McCain wants you to believe is the nation’s top expert on energy. Maybe Palin heard McCain say that we needed to simulate the economy and thought he was saying that we needed to stimulate the comedy.