$4.00 gal?

  No I was not mislead.  My son  works in the oil industry.  He drills the wells and caps them.  A few years back there was a pipeline built from colorado and utah to Wyoming.  From wyoming that oil is piped to Canada.  The oil is being process in fuel and shipped back to wyoming, idaho, utah, and colorado fuel storage and refining areas where it is sold to stations.  And we are paying Canada for that fuel.  A few years ago I helped open a sinclair gas station and rv park in Utah and the sinclair fuel delivery truck driver told us he picks up the fuel in Wyoming to deliver in Utah and that it came from Canada as well. 
  Also it has been on the Utah news that half the fuel sold out of North Salt Lake refinery was fuel shipped to Utah from Canada.  One man who owns some oil wells and the trucks that ship them is buiding a refinery in Green River, Utah just because of this reason.  The Salt Lake refinery was no longer buying his crude for processing  because they had too much now with what they get piped in and with the fuel being shipped to them from Canada.
  As for no new wells being drilled my sons company he has like 6 oil drilling teams running constantly and they drill a hole and cap the wells about one every three or four months to one every 7 months  and he has six crews doing this.  I have been thru his wells in Colorado and Utah and seen the many many capped wells.  They say when ever we need it the crude is just waiting to be pumped.  But they have no place to send it.  He has showed me the many wells that are pumping oil to canada for processing as well as the pipeline they pump it thru. 
Sadly we the americans in most cases are blind.

Alaskansnowbirds said:

Unless they changed the law they can't do that. When the pipeline was built, in what ever law that the Feds pass to allow the building of the pipeline, it was stipulated that the oil could only be used in the U.S. To the best of my knowledge Alaska crud is shipped to California refineries.

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Oh that law was just to get the pipeline approved didn't mean they were going to comply.  If you do a little research you will fine that very little, if any, Alaskan oil is used in the US.  Most goes to Japan and Israel but it is exported from CA.

I read/heard somewhere that the oil from the North Slope is exported to Japan because of the high sulfur content, which we cannot not use in the US.

Can anyone confirm that?

carson

According to this  http://www.ipmall.info/hosted_resources/crs/RS22142_050506.pdf    there was export from 95 to 2000 but it was on 7% of the oil coming out of the north slope.  No oil is presently being exported.
Here is the top 15 countries that import crude oil and petroleum.  http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
And here is an interesting comment from this page as well.  Canada remained the largest exporter of total petroleum in January, exporting 2.586 million barrels per day to the United States, which is an increase from last month (2.360 thousand barrels per day).

exporting 2.586 million barrels per day to the United States, which is an increase from last month (2.360 thousand barrels per day).

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Wow! That's several magnitudes higher! (I'm sure you meant 2.360 MILLION barrels, right?