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President Obama stopped in Cushing, Okla., on Thursday to announce a fast-track approval process for a portion of the Keystone XL oil pipeline -- although it's not the part for which he's taken political heat for blocking.

The portion likely to start construction soon runs from Cushing, a key repository of U.S. oil, to the Gulf Coast

The full proposed pipeline, which would cross the U.S. border in Montana, is designed to bring between 500,000 to 700,000 barrels a day from the Canadian oil sands region to refineries on the Gulf Coast. It would shortcut to an existing pipe that goes through much of Canada before cutting into the United States in North Dakota on the way to Cushing.

Republican presidential candidates have used the rejection of the shortcut pipeline as a hammer when attacking the Obama administration over high gas prices. They also say the Keystone will create much needed jobs.

Here are three facts about what the decision will and won't mean.

This is not a flip-flop by Obama: Even when Obama blocked the full Keystone project earlier this year, he said he was in favor of this Cushing-to-Gulf portion. And that is the only portion he is backing now.

Approval of this southern part of the pipeline is not really the Obama administration's call. The northern portion of the pipeline needs administration approval because it would cross the Canadian border.

The Cushing-to-Gulf segment is much more of a local issue. So Thursday's announcement is more theater than substance.

"This is pretty routine, but the politics are clear here," said Bob Tippee, editor of Oil & Gas Journal, an industry trade publication.

Environmental groups oppose even this portion of the pipeline since they don't like anything that increases production of oil from oil sands.

But compared to the other portion of pipeline, which stirred concerns of Nebraskans worried about underground water supplies, the Cushing-to-Gulf pipeline is relatively non-controversial. More than 99% of property owners where the pipeline will run agree to it.

Gas prices might go up, not down: Right now, a lot of oil being produced in Canada and North Dakota has trouble reaching the refineries and terminals on the Gulf. Since that supply can't be sold abroad, it reduces the competition for it to Midwest refineries that can pay lower prices to get it.

Giving the Canadian oil access to the Gulf means the glut in the Midwest goes away, making it more expensive for the region.

0:00 / 5:23 Cutting through the Keystone XL hysteria
"The price that refineries on the coasts have been paying is around $120 a barrel for months, while you had $75 to $80 a barrel crude available in the Rockies and Midwest," said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service.

Much of the difference in gas prices between states is due to gas taxes, not cost. But Kloza said that the center of the country might have benefited by up to 25 cents a gallon in what they were paying for gas because of the glut of oil around Cushing.

The full pipeline would increase the capacity of oil flowing from Canada's oil sands into the broader global market by up to 700,000 barrels a day, according to advocates. But adding even the 700,000 barrels to more than 90 million barrels worldwide will have limited long-term impact on prices, especially amid worries about what might happen with Iran production.

"In the current market, people are so worried about the loss of 3.5 million barrels from Iran, that 500,000 to 700,000 barrels isn't enough to calm the markets," said Tippee.

The impact on jobs will be minimal: The Republican supporters of the pipeline have argued Keystone will create much needed jobs.

But even though this southern portion of the pipeline is relatively "shovel ready," the impact on unemployment will be minimal. Even TransCanada says it will create about 4,000 jobs, mostly temporary construction work. That comes to less than 2% of the nation's overall monthly job gain in recent months.

If the full pipeline got the green light, it would create 13,000 construction jobs and 7,000 jobs making equipment such as pump houses and the pipe itself, according to the company.

Pipeline critics dispute even those job estimates. http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/22/news/economy/keystone-pipeline/index.h
tm?hpt=hp_bn3 been over the real facts on Keystone, but just to remind those who've forgotten (or who want so badly to believe the oil-and-gas companies and right wingers' propaganda, I offer this (from FauxNews, mind you):

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In announcing his decision to not grant permission for the Keystone pipeline extension, opponents of President Obama argue the president gave in to pressure from environmental activists.

In reality, the president was resisting an artificial deadline from Republicans trying to force his hand.

But the fact is, for the good of our country and our economy, rejecting the Keystone XL deal was the best decision possible.

Here are six facts about the proposed Keystone XL deal that make clear why the pipeline was a bad deal for America and why it deserved to be rejected:

1. Keystone XL Would Not Reduce Foreign Oil Dependency

The oil to be sent through Keystone XL pipeline was never destined for US markets. In its own presentation to investors about the proposed pipeline extension, TransCanada (the company behind Keystone XL) boasted that most if not all of the extracted and refined oil would be exported --- sold in oversees markets where oil fetches a higher price (and thus turns a higher profit for the company).

2. Keystone XL Would Have Increased Domestic Oil Prices

Currently, Canadian oil reserves stored in the Midwest help suppress gas prices in the United States, particularly for farmers in our nation’s heartland.


In its permit application for the pipeline, TransCanada noted that the Keystone XL pipeline would allow the company to drain these reserves and export that fuel as well. According to TransCanada’s own statements, this would raise gas prices in the United States, especially in the Midwest.

3. Keystone XL Overstated Number of Jobs to be Created

In 2008, TransCanada’s original permit application to the State Department said the Keystone XL pipeline would create “a peak workforce of approximately 3,500 to 4,200 construction personnel” in temporary jobs building the pipeline.

By 2011, now facing growing opposition to the pipeline, TransCanada had inflated these numbers (using undisclosed formulas) to 20,000. Supporters of the proposal, backed by big oil, have since trumpeted these trumped up numbers.

4. Current Keystone Pipeline Leaked 12 Times in Last Year

The pipeline that the Obama administration has rejected the permit for would be an extension of a pipeline that has already leaked -- not just once, but 12 times in the last year.

While TransCanada tried to dismiss these leaks as “minor” averaging “just five to 10 gallons of oil” each, the leak on May 7, 2011 near Millner, N.D., spilled about 21,000 gallons of oil in total.

5. The Environmental Concerns About Oil Leaks Are Justified

Nebraska’s Republican Governor Dave Heineman strongly opposed the Keystone XL project because the pipeline would run through a massive and vital aquifer in his state the supplies clean drinking water to over 2 million Americans plus water that fuels the region’s agriculture industry.

Building the pipeline might have created a few thousand temporary jobs but even a minor oil spill in or near the aquifer would have jeopardized hundreds of thousands of jobs, not to mention the health and safety of millions.

Meanwhile, in Michigan where a similar tar sands pipeline spilled over 840,000 gallons of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River in 2010, residents are still complaining of headaches, dizziness and nausea while studies continue to look at the long-term effects of just being near such an oil spill when it happens.

6. Mining Tar Sands Would Worsen Global Warming

Assuming you believe, like the vast majority of the world’s scientists, that climate change is both real and of concern, the Canadian tar sands are the second largest carbon reserve in the world.

Mining these reserves would release all of that carbon into the atmosphere, to detrimental effect on our environment. Sure, Canada might go ahead and mine the tar sands anyway, but the United States doesn’t have to help pollute the planet and our own states in the process.

No matter how you look at it, the Keystone XL proposal was a slimy, scam of a deal. America is better than that.

We can create good-paying jobs that build our families and our economy for the future without hurting our environment today.

We can invest in innovative energy technology that not only reduces our dependence on dirty fuel but also puts us in the lead in critical, emerging markets.

We can prioritize good jobs and a competitive economy of the future, with all the upsides of American energy production and innovation and far, far fewer of the downsides that Keystone carried. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/01/18/six-reasons-keystone-xl-was-
bad-deal-all-along/

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It's somewhat reassuring to learn the facts about the southern section (which of course the Republican candidates are making the most of to mock Obama), I never forget what I read about the TRUTH of Keystone, and wish more people had the real facts. Fear over gas prices has made people ignore the truth of the situation--if they ever even knew it! Certainly those who only watch FauxNews pundits never heard any of this, it's only on the opinion page of their website. If you google "Fox News Keystone", you get exactly what you'd expect.

Nonetheless, for the second time I am forced--am actually quite willing--to applaud Fox's News department for doing a good job of revealing the real facts. I'm impressed.

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In the year 2004, wind energy in California produced 4,258 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, about 1.5 percent of the state's total electricity. That's more than enough to light a city the size of San Francisco

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According to the Bureau of Land Management, the agency tasked with reporting oil drilling permits, etc. on federal lands has reported that in 2001, the Bush administration approved only 3,439 permits increasing slightly to 3,802 by 2003. It wasn’t until 2004 that Bush doubled the permits approved, but by they dropped dramatically back down to 4,579 in 2005.

In 2009 under President Obama, there were 4,487 oil drilling permits approved to drill on federal land and in 2010 there were 4,090 permits issued and finally by 2011 there were 4,244.

Now, let’s look at new wells started.

In 2001,under President Bush, 3,448 wells were started dropping dramatically down to 2,871 in 2002, then only 2,957 new wells in 2003, and only 2,702 in 2004 and finally dropping to 1,742 in 2005. In comparison in 2009 under Obama there were 3,267 new wells started, in 2010 there were 3,166 and 2011 there were 3,260.

Now we will look at new leases on federal land. In 2001 Bush issued 3,289 new leases, only 2,384 in 2002, and 2,022, in 2003 and finally 2,699 in 2004. Now let’s compare Obama’s actions, in 2009 there were 2,072 new leases, in 2010 there were 1,308, and finally in 2011 there 2,188.

So when we compare two Presidents and the first term, Obama is NOT halting any production any more than George W Bush. In fact in some areas he exceeded President Bush. This needs to be explained by the Republicans, because it looks like Obama is more of an oil president than Bush.

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The number of rigs in the United States has been soaring during the Obama years. Oil drilling is up nearly 60 percent in the past year alone. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/yes-oil-production
-is-booming-under-obama-no-it-hasnt-lowered-gas-prices/2011/08/31/gIQAWv8bsJ_blog.html of 2011:

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United States is enjoying a mini oil boom. It's producing more crude oil and, for the first time in decades, has become a net exporter of petroleum products such as jet fuel, heating oil and gasoline.

The U.S. exported more oil-based fuels than it imported in the first nine months of this year, making it likely that 2011 will be the first time since 1949 that the nation is a net exporter of such goods, primarily diesel.

That's not all. The U.S. has reversed another decades-long trend. It began producing more crude oil in 2008 than the year before and accelerated that upswing 3% in the first nine months of this year compared with the same period in 2010. That production has helped reduce U.S. imports of crude oil by about 10% since 2006.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/story/2011-12-16/us-oi
l-boom/52053236/1 yeah, he's saying the same things others do, but he's been DOING something about it, which others haven't.

I don't like it, first because no matter how much we produce, it doesn't benefit US much:

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American consumers benefit little from the U.S. oil boomlet, because their fuel prices depend heavily on a global oil market that remains tight and has probably already peaked in production, says Jeremy Rifkin, author of The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy and the World. Same

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Second, because oil is dirty, the environmental damage has already been seen and there's more to come, and we need to get away from fossil fuels. Everyone knows the arguments on those points, so I won't look up quotes.

I'm disappointed Obama has increased oil production, but grateful that he has, at least, put some emphasis on NON-OIL energy as well. It's a toss-up, to me.

You want the facts spelled out for you? Try this (if you'll bother to read it)

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The truth is that there is no silver bullet to address rising gas prices in the short term, but there are steps we can take to ensure the American people don’t fall victim to skyrocketing gas prices over the long term. That’s why since taking office the President has been focused on a sustained, “all-of-the-above” approach to developing new domestic energy sources, expanding oil and gas production, and reducing our reliance on foreign oil, most notably through the historic fuel economy standards the President has established, which will nearly double the efficiency of the vehicles we drive and save families $1.7 trillion at the pump. It’s true that in the near term, the U.S. will continue to rely on responsibly produced oil and gas, but over the long term, the Obama administration is committed to a policy that allows us to transition from oil towards cleaner alternatives and energy efficiency. This strategy is a win-win scenario. A win for the economy. A win for energy security. And a win for the environment. Despite the facts, Republicans have continued to ratchet up the rhetoric, distorting facts and in some cases pushing complete falsehoods for short term political gains.

Here are some of the claims that have been made recently, and the reality that the politicians making those claims fail to acknowledge.

“Over the last three years, your administration has blocked, slowed, and discouraged the production of critical American energy sources.”

False. The numbers speak for themselves. Since 2008, U.S. oil and natural gas production has increased each year, while imports of foreign oil have decreased.

•In 2011, U.S. crude oil production reached its highest level in 8 years, increasing by an estimated 110,000 barrels per day over 2010 levels to 5.59 million barrels per day.
•U.S. natural gas production grew in 2011 – the largest year-over-year volumetric increase in history – and easily eclipsed the previous all-time production record set in 1973.
Even if you fail to give the Obama Administration the credit it deserves in helping to expand this production, any notion that production has been blocked or slowed, doesn’t square with the facts.

“This President continues to limit offshore areas to energy production and is granting fewer leases on public land for oil drilling.”

False. In the wake of the largest oil spill in U.S. history the Obama Administration put in place important new standards that ensured that drilling continued, but that the lessons of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill were recognized, and guided future production. Today drilling and production continues, but in line with these important new standards. In fact, since new standards were put into place last year, the administration has approved hundreds of permits for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, including:

•308 permits for deep water drilling activities for 94 unique wells in the Gulf of Mexico and;
•113 permits for shallow water wells in the Gulf of Mexico.
In fact, we are now permitting at levels seen before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, all while meeting these important new standards.

Additionally, we believe an all-of-the-above approach doesn’t need to come at-any-cost. That is why just as we make available more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources, the Obama Administration continues to study the feasibility of exploration, development, and production in other areas. We will move forward, but in a manner that is safe and sensible. We need to protect sensitive ecosystems, and we don’t have to indulge the false choice between our energy security and the environment.

“President Barack Obama likes to take credit for this energy boom, but in reality, recent U.S. energy growth is largely a result of private-sector investment and policies put in place by his predecessors. The energy policies this president has adopted are jeopardizing the progress we have made, and if he continues them, the U.S. energy boom could soon be over.”

Since 2008, U.S. oil and natural gas production has increased each year, while imports of foreign oil have decreased. Much of that production is on private lands, and the President believes that we want to be expanding responsible production across the country not just on public lands.

We have taken steps to extend existing leases in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. In addition, in December the administration held a lease sale that covered over 20 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico, and last month the President announced an additional sale that will cover 38 million acres and produce up to 1 billion barrels of oil and 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Lastly and most importantly, we have put in place new rules to ensure that oil and gas companies are using the leases they have, and not just sitting on them. A report released last year by the Department of the Interior found that about 57 percent of leased onshore acres and over 70 percent of leased offshore acres were not being developed by the oil and gas companies that own them. And in 2010, of the nearly 37 million offshore acres offered for lease by the Federal government, only 2.4 million acres were leased by companies.

And EIA has projected that this trend of increased production will continue for the foreseeable future.

“On federal land, energy production fell 11 percent last year, and your draft five-year plan for off shore exploration projects a decline in federal leasing and permitting.”

On federal lands, we are taking steps to encourage increased production. Of course, public lands do not tell the whole story. Overall, since 2008, U.S. oil and gas production is up, and last year more oil was produced in this country than at any time since 2003. And despite a shift of industry interest away from producing on public lands, we continue to offer and permit more public land for development and production. Today, the U.S. has more oil and rigs at work in the field than the entire rest of the world. And, for federal waters, the Administration has announced the 2012-2017 Offshore Oil and Gas Development Program, which will make available more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources.

As you can see, the claims and the facts just don’t add up.

But our production record doesn’t end there.

•Earlier this month the Obama Administration announced the next steps towards further energy exploration in the Arctic. And last week, we joined Mexico in an agreement that will make more than 1.5 million acres in the Gulf available for exploration and production, which contains an estimated 172 million barrels of oil and 304 billion cubic feet of natural gas.
•The Administration has proposed an Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2012-2017, which makes available more than 75 percent of estimated undiscovered oil and gas resources on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf. The proposed program schedules 15 potential lease sales, 12 in the Gulf of Mexico and three off the coast of Alaska, advancing safe and responsible domestic energy exploration and production by offering substantial acreage for lease in regions with known potential for oil and gas development.
•We are encouraging development of mineral resources in the Rocky Mountain West. For example, in February, we made more than half a million acres available for research and development of oil shale and other unconventional oil resources.
•Last year, the President established an interagency Alaska working group, which has been working to improve the efforts of Federal agencies responsible for overseeing the safe and responsible development of onshore and offshore energy in Alaska. The group has been coordinating review of Shell’s proposed exploration activities in the Arctic, where we have not only extended leases, but are on track to approve exploratory development this summer.
•Onshore in Alaska, this Administration committed to holding annual lease sales. In December 2011 we held a lease sale that covered over 140,000 acres and generated $3.6 million in total bids.
•We have made enormous progress on renewable permitting for federal lands. In all the years leading up to 2009, the federal government permitted a total 1,530 megawatts of clean energy – including zero megawatts of solar. But in the last three years, we have approved 29 onshore renewable energy projects to reach approximately 6,600 additional megawatts – including 16 solar projects, 5 wind farms, and 8 geothermal facilities. In this State of the Union address, the President set a goal to reach 10,000 megawatts by the end of this year – enough to power 3 million homes. That’s a strong record.
Lastly, as part of the promises for quick fixes, politicians have turned the Keystone pipeline into some sort of panacea to high prices at the pump. The irony is that it was Congressional Republicans who stopped this project from going forward by inserting it into the December payroll tax cut legislation and trying to score political points, despite knowing that it could not be approved before their arbitrary deadline. Regardless, even if the pipeline had been approved, the oil from this pipeline does not start flowing immediately; first, the pipeline needs to be built. In fact it would take the Keystone pipeline more than 45 years to carry the amount of oil we will save through the historic fuel economy standards established by President Obama.

That said, the January denial of the permit was not a judgment on the merits of the project. Dozens of pipelines have been built under this administration, and just this week TransCanada stated the company will move forward with a separate pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast. As the President stated in January, we support TransCanada’s interest in proceeding with the Cushing project, which will help address the bottleneck of oil in Cushing that has resulted in large part from increased domestic oil production. Moving oil from the Midwest to the state-of-the-art refineries on the Gulf Coast will not only modernize our infrastructure, but it will create jobs and encourage American energy production. We look forward to working with TransCanada to ensure that it is built in a safe, responsible and timely manner. We’ll also take every step possible to expedite the necessary Federal permits.

Separately, TransCanada gave the State Department advance notice of its intention to submit a new application for the cross-border segment of the Keystone XL pipeline, from Canada to Steele City, Nebraska, once a route through Nebraska has been identified. By not allowing sufficient time for important review or the identification of a complete pipeline route, Republicans in the House forced a rejection of the company’s earlier application in January. And as we made clear, the President’s decision in January in no way prejudged future applications. We will ensure any project receives the important assessment it deserves, and will base a decision to provide a permit on the completion of that review. http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/02/29/fact-check-all-above-approac
h-american-energy]

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Santorum said that Obama "has put (up) a stop sign … against oil drilling, against any kind of exploration offshore or in Alaska, and that is depressing. We need to drill. We need to create energy jobs."

We took a look at a similar statement in March, when Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. -- another GOP presidential contender -- told an audience at a conservative conference that "the number of new drilling permits under the Obama Administration since they came into office" is "one." We ruled that statement Pants on Fire.

We’ll refer back to our discussion of that claim here, updating it with more current information.

The most recent summary from Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, or BOEMRE -- the federal agency that oversees drilling -- is included in a document titled the "Status of Well Permits and Plans Subject to Enhanced Safety and Environmental Requirements."

The report says that 56 shallow-water permits for new wells have been issued since June 8, 2010, when new rules and information requirements were put into effect following the BP oil spill. Shallow-water drilling operations were not affected by the deep-water drilling moratorium following the spill.

In addition, since February of this year -- following the lifting of the moratorium and confirmation of the industry's ability to meet subsea containment requirements -- the government has approved 48 deep-water permits requiring subsea containment, covering 16 unique wells. Another 40 permits not requiring subsea containment have also been approved since October. The operators were required to come back and meet the modified standards.

So there’s been movement on offshore permits in the Gulf of Mexico under Obama. What about drilling elsewhere?

Arctic Ocean exploratory drilling permits continue to wend their way through the permitting process at the Department of Interior, said Richard Charter, a senior policy adviser for the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife.

A chart from BOEMRE confirms that no new offshore wells have been drilled in Alaska since Obama took office. However, only one such well has been drilled in the past dozen years, including eight years when a Republican, George W. Bush was president. So the shortage of drilling in Alaska is not exclusively an Obama-related problem.

Obama did announce in May that he was directing the Interior Department to conduct annual lease sales in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve. He also ordered a speed-up of seismic surveys of mid- and south-Atlantic coasts and new incentives for industry to develop unused leases both on and offshore.

All in all, then, Santorum’s claim is incorrect.

"None of this could be accurately even remotely characterized as a ‘stop sign,’" said Charter of Defenders of Wildlife.

We agree. It’s true that the Obama Administration pulled back the reins after the BP spill. But the administration has continued approving shallow-water wells, and it began to approve deep-water wells again after the moratorium was lifted six months ago. Just because the pace isn’t as fast as some would like doesn’t mean that Obama "has put (up) a stop sign … against oil drilling, against any kind of exploration offshore or in Alaska." At most, it would be a yellow light, and Santorum’s claim -- referring to curbs on "any kind" of exploration -- is over-broad. So we rate Santorum’s claim False. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jun/15/rick-sa
ntorum/rick-santorum-says-barack-obama-has-raised-stop-si/ to Obama doing what others have SAID they'd do, I was referring to the idea of getting off "foreign oil" (tho' there is really no such thing) and getting off fossil fuels. He's done a ton to encourage alternative fuels, AND we're one of the major exporters of oil now. So he's done both.

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Increased Domestic Drilling Activity Has Not Led To Lower Gasoline Prices

Since the 1990s, the federal government has consistently encouraged the development of its oil and gas resources and the amount of drilling on federal lands has steadily increased during this time. The number of drilling permits has exploded in recent years, going from 3,802 five years ago to 7,561 in 2007.

Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for development of public lands increased by more than 361%, yet gasoline prices have also risen dramatically (Figure 1) contradicting the argument that more drilling means lower gasoline prices. There is simply no correlation between the two.

Energy Companies Not Using Federal Lands Already Open to Energy Development

Even if increased domestic drilling activity could affect the price of gasoline, there is yet no justification to open additional federal lands because oil and gas companies have shown that they cannot keep pace with the rate of drilling permits that the federal government is handing out.

In the last four years, the Bureau of Land Management has issued 28,776 permits to drill on public land; yet, in that same time, 18,954 wells were actually drilled. That means that companies have stockpiled nearly 10,000. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&a
mp;address=433x300521

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The Bush administration did industry’s bidding for eight years: from fiscal 2001 to fiscal 2009, more than 41,700 drilling permits were approved on federal lands, almost two-and-a-half times as many as during the previous eight years. In 2005, the Government Accountability Office found that the “dramatic increase” in oil and gas development on federal lands had undercut the BLM’s ability to meet its environmental obligations. The pace of development was such that rural Sublette County, Wyoming – which doesn’t even have a traffic light – recorded ozone levels in February 2008 that were nearly 50 percent higher than federal health standards. Same

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the pace of approval has slowed, in large part because Obama has made clear that he wants drilling to be done safely and in an environmentally sensitive fashion.

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With two years of the Obama administration, almost four times as much clean energy has been put on the grid on public lands as in all the previous 40 years.

All the renewable energy ever permitted on public lands totaled 1,800 MW by the end of 2008. In the last two years, the Department of the Interior has approved 6,600 MW of new projects. http://cleantechnica.com/2011/12/31/obama-has-nearly-quadrupled-renewa
ble-energy-on-public-lands/ is sufficient; I'm not spending one more minute refuting your deliberate partisan blindness.

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Despite daily headlines bemoaning record gas prices, the United States is actually one of the cheaper places to fill up in the world.

The difference is staggering. As of late March, U.S. gas prices averaged $3.45 a gallon. That compares to over $8 a gallon across much of Europe.

Gasoline costs roughly the same to make no matter where in the world it's produced, according to John Felmy, chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute. The difference in retail costs, he said, is that some governments subsidize gas while others tax it heavily.

In the United States, the federal tax on gas is about 18 cents a gallon, pretty low by international standards.

But those relatively low gas taxes make it hard now for Americans to deal with gas prices that have risen from around $1 to over $3 a gallon in the last seven years.

"Everybody pays more, but the U.S. pays more in relative terms," said Lee Schipper, a visiting scholar at the University of California Berkeley's Transportation Center. If you're a European and you're already paying $4 in taxes, said Schipper, then an extra $2 a gallon doesn't seem like it's as big of a change as Americans are facing.

Revenues from Europe's high gas taxes are used to fund a variety of things. One thing they have built is better public transportation, said Peter Tertzakian, chief energy economist at ARC Financial, a Calgary-based private equity firm.

They gave people an alternative to driving, something we don't have in North America," said Tertzakian.

In fact, the United States could not have had the western expansion it did without the cheap mobility railroads and horse carriages afforded long before it became an auto-obsessed culture, said Lang.

"You couldn't have Manifest Destiny unless you could move," he said.

The automobile, and its promise of personal mobility, only deepened the nation's love affair with travel.

There is some evidence Europe's high gas taxes have capped its oil consumption.

Oil use in the United Kingdom has basically stayed flat from 1980 to now, while in France it's dropped 17%, according to figures from the Energy Information Administration.

In the United States, meanwhile, oil use is up 21% over the same period, although the country has added more people and seen its economy grow slightly faster.

Americans have taken advantage of cheap gas prices to do other things - like buy bigger cars and bigger houses further away from city centers, said Schipper.

On a per capita basis, Americans use three times more oil than Europeans, he said. That means Americans are more exposed to rising gas prices than their counterparts across the Atlantic.

"Five-thousand square feet in the suburbs, that's much rarer in Europe," said Schipper, referring to big homes. "We dug our hole." More at http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/01/news/international/usgas_price/] Bogged down
Most expensive places to buy gas
Rank Country Price/gal
1. Eritrea $9.58
2. Norway $8.73
3. United Kingdom $8.38
4. Netherlands $8.37
5. Monaco $8.31
6. Iceland $8.28
7. Belgium $8.22
8. France $8.07
9. Germany $7.86
10. Portugal $7.84
108. United States $3.45

Cruisin'
Where gasoline is cheapest
Rank Country Price/gal
1. Venezuela 12 cents
2. Iran 40 cents
3. Saudi Arabia 45 cents
4. Libya 50 cents
5. Swaziland 54 cents
6. Qatar 73 cents
7. Bahrain 81 cents
8. Egypt 89 cents
9. Kuwait 90 cents
10. Seychelles 98 cents
44. United States $3.45