Also remember, that just drilling more oil does not reduce domestic gas prices as much as you'd think. Part of that reason is a significant amount of domestically pumped oil and refined fuel is exported. Mostly because gas prices in many countries are higher than here and it's more profit to export it, and in some cases since our oil isn't the best quality in many places, we don't have good refineries for it. We are the #1 oil producer in the world by far now, we've blown Russia and Sadi Arabia out of the water by a wide margin since around 2020, and have been the leading oil producer since around 2015. We probably produce almost 30% more oil than the next leading country today, so the idea that we're somehow reducing production or going backwards is just simply false marketing.
That exporting takes a toll on domestic supply and keeps our prices higher. Basically if companies stopped doing that, we could have eliminated our domestic consumption long ago. It's of course a bit more complex than that, because not every petroleum product is made here, so some have to be exported/imported. That said, it's a free country they can sell to whoever they want and if others will pay them more for it, hard to blame them, but if we were not a massive exporter of petroleum products, we probably could already be oil independent. Part of that equation is simply oil/refinery desire for higher profits selling to other countries that pay more for their products.
In 2023 the US exported 10% of the total US gasoline consumption, almost 1 million barrels a day, and over 10 million barrels a day are exported of general petroleum products. We are the world's only net exporter of refined petroleum. In 2023 we imported ~9 million barrels of petroleum products per day, but exported almost 11 million.
They are building refineries, though you could make a case that they are not building enough. 10 refineries have come online since 2012, including the 2nd and 3rd largest capacity refineries in the country. I'm all for increasing our supply and getting out of the practice of paying our enemies for oil, but as long as the free market is involved, that will never happen, even if we doubled our production. As long as companies can make more money exporting fuel, they will, if you try to increase supply so much it hurts their bottom dollar, they will just dial back how much the product at the wells. Pretty much all of this info can be found at eia.gov
The idea that somehow we're going to get a to place where we have $1.50 gas, will never happen in a free market where greed controls the entire game. Nothing wrong with that, greed and a desire to succeed is crucial and frankly in short supply these days, but it's directly at odds with lower consumer prices. If we drill more, they will just export more for the higher profits as opposed to holding it domestically for cheaper pump prices.
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