Why must our domestic oil price be set by any other dynamic other than a domestic issue?

the alternative is socialism.

Eh sort of, we import a lot of oil because we cannot process light sweet crude in enough volume to satisfy our use.

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You know, you could just answer the question

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With my question I did.

We can manipulate the free market to do all sorts of stuff via government action. That's socialism though. Why would we want to act like Communists? Why would we ignore the failures of these policies throughout history? Why would we ignore political principle to be communists?

Some of our domestically produced oil goes to other countries like Japan while we still import some.

I don’t doubt there is some opportunistic gouging going on, but there is a world market at work. The oil companies are going to sell for the highest price.

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Because it is a world market and the oil we produce doesn't just stay here. Unless you want to remove the incentive for companies to find and extract oil to control the price, which will result in an immediate halt to all production.

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I understand the dynamics. However, worldwide, medical prescriptions are a market yet so cheap in many countries. Why can't oil and gas in the USA play that same game?