If you correct gas prices over the last thirty years for inflation you will see that real gas prices have been very cheap up until now, it’s not the beginning of expensicve gas, it’s just the end of cheap gas.
The US holds roughly 3% of the world’s oil reserves, so if we drilled and pumped oil from every workable location in the US including ANWR it would not effect the price of gasoline one bit.
Taking oil from our nation’s strategic oil reserve just to effect gasoline prices is a dumb idea.
Corporate profits are the money left over after all other expenses are removed, so when an oil company executive claims on TV that they need these obsene profits for exploration and R&D they are being less than genuine. Profits are the money left over after all of the expenses, including R&D and exploration. They should stop treating us like idiots.