http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6326

This is a good essay I picked up from the Oil Drum, speaking about the misconceptions of oil by politicians and the media, and its impact on us. The most important part is quoted below, dealing with the concept of foreign versus domestic oil. The distinction does not exist anymore, and unfortunately, most people do not realize it in today's era of globalization and multinational oil companies. We think of oil as belonging to the state, such as American oil, Saudi Arabian oil, or Iranian oil, when really, it is the large international firms that supply the funding, knowledge, equipment and workers to find and extract the oil for sale on the global market. Simply put, their goal to produce profits for their shareholders, not their country of origin, and the shareholders are no longer predominately based in the US, but all over the world.
This is a major reason why the US can't simply order up sanctions against Iran as a response to its nuclear intentions. The bottom line is, because of Iran's position as a major oil supplier, if we move to cut off its access to the world markets, it would hurt the rest of the world a lot more than it would hurt Iran. The global energy market would be in chaos, and $200 oil barrel prices would be the new normal. In the same context, making a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear interests would be equally foolhardy, as they would likely retaliate by cutting off its supply of oil and gas to the world.

-"For example, in our single supply and demand curve global oil market, there is no such thing as “foreign” oil. The term “foreign” before the word “oil” encourages people to view oil supply and the companies that acquire it from a flawed lens since it would have us implicitly assume that there could be a national role in the pursuit of oil resulting hopefully in a two price and supply structure: foreign and domestic. Nothing could be farther from reality and more impossible. First, there is only one kind of oil: not foreign, not domestic. Second, in an age of globalization, U.S.-based multinational companies are not American anymore since they belong to stockholders who may be from any nation around the world. Their profits, successes, and losses do not belong to the American people.

The oil market operates almost exactly the way a perfectly working market would in an economics textbook. With thousands upon thousands of individual players in the global oil market, we all purchase oil from the same exact global pool regardless of where it is produced. Thus, the market is out of the control of any single government or oil company, even Saudi Aramaco. We are no longer in the Cold War."-