The fundamental flaw in David Coghlan’s July 31 commentary is his assertion that increased domestic oil production would break our dependence on Persian Gulf oil.

What Coghlan overlooks is that oil is bought and sold in a global market. Because the U.S. cannot wall itself off from the worldwide oil market, trouble anywhere – violence in the Middle East, for example - will cause high prices everywhere.

While Coghlan talks of “vast” untapped domestic oil reserves, the facts are that the U.S. holds less than 3 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, yet we use 25 percent of world oil production. No matter how many oil wells we sink in our beautiful public lands out West or in waters off our coasts, our high oil demand will keep us dependent on the world oil market and vulnerable to all of its unpredictable twitches.

In short, as long as we are dependent on oil, we will be dependent on foreign oil.

Far from being our “salvation,” turning our public lands and coastal waters over to the oil companies would be a useless diversion that would raise false hopes and perpetuate our dangerous dependence on oil. Instead, we should aggressively reduce our oil dependence, through greater efficiency and diversifying our energy mix with ethanol and other non-petroleum alternatives.

It’s time to stop using yesterday’s thinking to solve today’s problems.