Re: do you suppose gas prices will go down?
I would rather see us sell it cheaper as petrol and raise our refining charges. The final price will always be dictated by a global level market. Right now we have diddly crude but refine a lot. I don't know if we control enough to be effective, but if you could move the final cost to the services rather than crude, we'd get a bigger piece of the market than just stumble on an oil field.
Remember, no company is gonna pass on the profit. And even the gov't would screw you blue as a consumer if the discovery was funded by them. Worse, they'd surely leverage it to manupulate consumption to different technologies where they have thus far failed to legislate such coercion. There would be progressive prices, just like taxes. Oh, you have a truck but don't work construction, well you pay an extra fee.
I'm far more interested in the miniature fusion reactors being developed in Taiwan than petroleum or natural gas, or solar, or hot air.
Out of the Middle East? To go where? War's as much dirty industry as it is dirty politics. I can't more seriously state that 9/11 has been a huge, huge, huge boon to many of "technology oriented" companies. DC/NoVa is called the "little silicon valley." Huntsville, Al is a boomtown, Raleigh/Durham, NC. has been growing tremendously too. Nobody is gonna shut down that river of money, especially not in a recession. Without fear, budgets don't get approved, and that means visible conflict must endure.
So, North Korea? Do we feign a return home and take a little detour to South America? The Middle East has blessed us with, historically speaking, relatively low casualties so why risk jungles on a new front? Besides, Ahmedinejad is giving us ample reasons to sell the public on danger vs NK. Russia has a big interest in South America, so that's a no-go with any better option.