heres another angle to think about
imagine you are a current oil producing foreign country or company
the US and US oil companies get the go ahead to start drilling in anwar and other currently off limits locations
you know that once that oil hits the market it will reduce the demand for your oil
but you also know it will take about 10 years for all of that oil to come on line... so you have a 10 year warning that the demand and in turn the price for your oil is going to reduce (possibly drastically) would you lower your price now, knowing that in 10 years you will have to? or would you jack your price up to make up for the lower profits you will be seeing in 10 or so years?
i know if it was me i would jack the shit out of my prices so i could make as much profit as i could while i could and deal with the lower profits in 10 years
all of this research and drilling and transporting and building and refining, is going to cost shit tons of money... that money will need to be offset with the price of the product...and even then with rising costs of everything... in 10 years when this oil finally does make it to market... will we be looking back at the days of $140 a barrel oil as if it was cheap? will we be looking at $5 a gallon gasoline as if it was cheap? i remember 4 or 5 years ago when gas was hitting $2 a gallon and people were flipping the fuck out... if gas was to go to $2 a gallon now people would be spontaneously orgasming in the streets
the days of cheap gas are over... we need more efficient modes of transportation... however we (america) have dropped the ball on creating fuel efficient vehicles, mostly because we got lazy and assumed we didnt need it when our gas was so cheap (kinda like we didnt think we had to drill for more oil because gas was so cheap)
changing the standards of what "fuel efficient" means might work for the idiots out there (unfortunately there is a lot of them) but there are also a lot of people who dont fall for that shit... theres a lot of people like me out there that want to smash their TV or radio every time they see or hear a commercial touting the new "fuel efficient" shit heap that gets 28MPG... its up to us to make the car companies know what we give a shit about REAL fuel efficiency not this fake ass 28mpg shit... its up to us to put the pressure on them to make REAL fuel efficiency a reality... if the CRX HF could get 50mpg at the end of the 80s... if the average civic could see 40mpg in the early 90s... there really is no reason that every car on the road shouldnt be able to pull at least 65mpg today... theres no reason trucks shouldnt be pulling 35+mpg today
we also need to push for more alternative energy vehicles... full electric cars tend to lack in either speed or range... 25mph with a 15 mile range is not a realistic replacement for a fuel powered vehicle... there are electric cars out there with better speed and range, but they tend to be cost prohibitive ($100,000.00 price tag)... battery technology is currently too expensive to get goos range at a reasonable speed for a decent price... but there is phase hybrid (im pretty sure thats what its called) technology out there that would allow a fuel efficient generator to be run off of fuel along side of electric motors with a battery pack that would allow for plug in hybrid capability... there are several cars currently being worked on with this technology... you can run 40-60 miles on strictly battery power... plug in at home, plug in at work, etc... if you dont exceed 60miles at a time your car wont need a drop of fuel... beyond that distance the generator fires up and provides power for the electric motors to run off of... this would give a efficient vehicle with highway speed capability, with the ability of being used for extended trips
its kinda like a lot of the trains in the north east (and probly other areas... but im familiar with the ones around here)... they have electric motors that move the train... the motors are supplied power either by a diesel generator, or over head power lines... when in areas with overhead power the train runs off of that... when there is no overhead power the train runs off of the generator...
these are all technologies that are available today... there are several companies currently competing for the X prise of making a mass producible vehicle that gets 100 MPGe that are using the phase hybrid design...
as battery technology gets better and less expensive these plug in phase hybrids will be able to achieve greater distances off of battery only power, as well as quicker recharging times...
develop generators that will run off of alternative renewable fuel sources, and you can have a car that doesnt need gas at all, is capable of highway speeds, and conventional gas engine ranges