So CPAC closed out with a call to drill for oil everywhere in order to supply Europe with oil and gas. That's the political take. Just drill everywhere and everything will be OK.

This morning I asked an oil producer for his take on this and he thought it was great. Only two things were holding him back: The price of oil and natural gas is too low to justify drilling in the areas he has under lease, and even if the price of NG increased he would have to wait almost a year for a rig since they are all working at the moment.

Conservatives love to find simple solutions to complicated problems, but their main problem with this is that there are no simple solutions for complicated problems.

Can we solve our energy problems by drilling more wells? Yes.

Now where do we get the money for drilling, the rigs to drill with, the people who know how to operated the rigs, the production people who know how to operated the fields, the distribution network for the new fields, the ports to export the products, the ports to receive the product, the pumpjacks to remove the oil from the ground......? Once all those little items are taken care of the US can ramp up drilling for oil, but to to plan to do otherwise is to put the cart before the horse.

Hard problems have hard solutions. Otherwise they would not be hard problems.