When have wars been about anything
but land and/or resource acquisition?
To ask a simple question, if the war is about oil, why haven't we taken any from Iraq? Or have we?
It's not quite as simple as flipping a switch and the oil goes through a different pipeline. Iraq's old government was demolished, the new government is still finding its legs, and there's quite a bit of civil unrest and small rebellions going on. The country has to be stable before it can start exporting oil in its full capacity, and I think the Bush Administration was expecting that to happen much sooner.
Besides, blatantly taking the oil would cause too much of an international outcry to be worth doing, so I'm guessing if they had a sinister plan, it was going to involve much more subtle avenues for profit (like, say, government contracts during the war and for the reconstruction afterwards, perhaps awarded to a company previously run by one of the cabinet members...)
Also, IIRC 60% of our oil is from Canada. My percentage may not be exact, but it is pretty high.
It's not quite as simple as "America needs oil, let's go get some." Nearly as important as making sure your country gets enough oil is making sure oil is traded in your currency. Middle East nations friendly to the US all sell their oil in US Dollars, which helps it keep its value (well, that's the idea, at least. I don't think the war's been kind to the Dollar).
The war was and is about oil, just not in the way most people say it is. It's not a we're gonna kill you and take your oil and there is nothing you can do about it war, it's a lets kill this crazy fucker over here next to these people who we can work with so he doesn't invade them and threaten our supply of oil from so and so a la Kuwait.
And let's not forget the scary (to the US) possibility of Iraq selling their oil in Euros rather than USD. If you think the exchange rate is bad now (or good if you live in the EU
), just think of what it might have been if Iraq's oil production boosted the Euro further.
As for why don't we drill in new areas in Alaska ask your friendly local ecomentalist why we aren't doing that, I think it has something to do with permafrost or something equally stupid.
I think it has more to do with the fact that the ANWR fields only have about two years worth of oil in them (
14.77 billion barrels at the most). I'm going to hazard a guess that they're more useful as a reserve than as an operational field at the moment (i.e. the price of oil has to rise further before a well will be profitable).