No, absolutely not. Allowing corporations to extract our nation's oil more rapidly and sell it on the international market is absolutely against the national interest.
The oil in Alaska. and the northern states, could be used exclusively for the American market. Why do you believe it would go the the international markets?
All it does is bring down the price worldwide ever so slightly in the short term and bring it up more significantly further down the road. Profits for those companies would go up, but it doesn't help the people. We have a finite amount of oil both in the world and in the US. Our national interest lies in stretching that out to last as long as possible, not consuming it as quickly as possible. That's not even considering global warming. When you take global warming into account, the case is even stronger that extracting it quickly is much worse than slowly.
We have plenty of oil in Canada and are prepared to export it to US refineries but it is taking far too long to get approval. The situation is being seriously misrepresented in the US and especially by the goofy former vice President under Bill Clinton. "B" list celebrities are getting more air time on the subject than those who actually understand the situation. The Chinese have no trouble investing in Canadian oil and importing it as well, but the Americans sit on their hands dithering while literally and figuratively tilting at windmills.
Nuclear I agree is the future.
Sure, but how many plants are being built? People talk of the Three Mile Island tragedy when no one was even hurt and get their news on views on the sublect from Jane Fond and Hollywood.
That said, government isn't really holding that back. Both parties support nuclear. Obama's energy secretary is clearly a major supporter of nuclear. But, yeah, expansion is slow. The energy secretary's stance is that the long term solution is nuclear, but it isn't really ready for primetime yet. It is still expensive and dangerous and it will take decades to switch over. His approach is to use renewables to bridge the gap between the present and when nuclear really can take over. I think that makes sense.
It would seem to make little sense to work on alternative sources when nuclear is the future (and the successful present in many areas of the world) if alternative energies are only a short term remedy. And as far as transportation goes (as well as many other areas), private industry is already working on that. No government funding is necessary.
It is far easier to rely on people's willingness to make a buck through hard work and initiative than giving people them money and expecting the same result. As long as the government is giving people money to look for alternative sources of energy, it is against their best interests to find any.
This all still just comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of what these programs are there for. This isn't a money making scheme for the federal government. It isn't about investing in businesses that will yield a good return. That just isn't the goal. The goal is a policy goal- to advance renewable energy and increase employment.
But instead the government is doing neither. This is to be expected.