>>>>And here we are with enough oil in Alaska to provide the U.S. fifty years, but we'd rather pay to have the drilling done in another country than in our own.
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>>I may be wrong (and it appear that I usually am), but it was my understand that most (if not all) of Alaska's oil is not gasoline quality. Most are converted to thing like plastics. I wish I could find a link to this.
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>I think that is part of it, but refinement cost should be able to overcome a few $ per barrel. From dim memory I get the impression that extraction from soil is much harder, but at twice the cost a few years ago were said to be ludicrous, that should have changed.
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>my 0.01 (not enough to buy stocks on)
>
>thomas

Also, if my memory is correct, Mexico is sitting on a very large source of oil. They just do not have the resources to get it out of the ground. That pool of oil stretches from somewhere in Mexico all the way into the Gulf of Mexico (where have off-shore rigs.) I bet there are many more untapped resources in countries that can not get to it.