The Bush administration has evidently decided that it can do little about the volatility of oil and gasoline prices for the present, other than exerting diplomatic pressure on the OPEC governments to raise production. For the longer future the Cheney group proposes a number of steps to encourage more drilling in the United States, to try to reduce American oil imports from the present level of 57 per cent of consumption. Whether reducing import dependence is a useful goal remains a matter of great controversy. Reductions would not greatly change the importance of world oil markets to U.S. national security, especially since this country's allies in European and Asia remain heavily dependent on Middle Eastern oil. Regardless of the percentage of its oil that the United States imports, the price will be set by world markets as they react to circumstances over which the United States often has little control.
Economists warn that oil markets, like all commodity markets, are inherently unstable.
But sudden swings in the prices of gasoline and oil have impacts on the whole national economy and raise sharp questions of social equity. To reduce those impacts, the only really effective strategy that oil-consuming countries have found is to reduce their consumption. American industry and electric utilities have been moving away from oil for many years. The American economy is now two and a half times as big as it was 30 years ago, and the population is one-third higher. Natural gas prices have followed a pattern similar to that of oil prices.