It's time to start drilling for oil and natural gas offshore on the east and west coasts. We are wasting our time and our money, and risking our future by not doing so. The energy needs of the United States have made oil our number one import and the biggest factor in our imbalance of trade.

It is not just that oil holds us hostage to the rest of the world. This imbalance of trade means we cannot support ourselves and must borrow from others to get by, and I, for one, have a very hard time with that notion. I prefer independence -- remember that? I think it was an important concept in our founding, way back when.

The imbalance in trade is a mortgage against the future of our children and it is getting worse year after year. The money often goes to foreign governments whose interests are not aligned with ours and they hold us politically and economically captive. Nothing is more shameful than President Bush pleading with Saudi Monarchs to pump more oil.

The new CEO of BP (NYSE: BP), one of the world's largest oil companies, says that its next quarter will be "dreadful," according to The Financial Times. How can that be with oil prices at record highs? The shares of rival Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) trade at almost $92, close to an all-time high.

The answer seems to be that BP is in the wrong segments of the oil and gas business at the wrong time, and poor management has crippled the company. Its shares are up 10% this year, less than the S&P 500 and virtually all of its competitors.

BP is heavily into the refining and natural gas businesses where margins have not been as good as they are in oil exploration. The company's North Sea pipeline has been damaged.

BP also suffers from missteps in its recent past. Its Alaska pipeline has had leak problems, and the explosion of one of its refineries in Texas killed several workers.

New management, however, also points the finger at an organization that has been set up with too much complexity, making operating the huge company more difficult. The plan is to cut-back levels of staff and consolidate the company into fewer divisions.

It is a classic case of blaming the former management when things go badly.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

In a world that's dependent on natural gas and eager for efficient ways to ship it, a company like South African-based Sasol Ltd (NYSE: SSL) will always be in demand. As a leader in the field of converting gas to diesel liquid (it also excels at converting coal to liquid), Sasol should always be a solid pick at the right price, especially since the company balances its risk in the cyclical energy markets with its chemical division, which produces a wide range of chemicals for industrial processes.

There are risks for a company like SSL beyond the cyclical nature of the energy markets. The company also faces competition from the growing popularity of liquefied natural gas. It can also suffer from unanticipated work stoppages, as happened for 40 days at one of its plants in the first half of 2007, forcing SSL to purchase synthetic fuels from third parties to fulfill its contracts, which cut into margins. If there are worldwide slowdowns in construction and other industries, there may be a slackening demand for both of SSL's divisions.

But I think SSL's integrated and diversified structure will protect it against any serious downside, and I'm impressed with a recent Bear Stearns report that predicted SSL will have a strong second half of 2007, driven mostly by improving sales in its chemical division, along with stronger margins created by recent technological developments that increase efficiency and should lower raw-material costs. The analyst predicted the fuels division would stay flat, but that this would be offset by the chemicals division. SSL will also benefit from a law passed in early August in South Africa that will protect SSL and other energy companies from any windfall taxes.

The Bear Stearns report predicted this stock to hit $50 in 2008; that's a gain of 25%, which may be ambitious, but I agree this company has room to grow, and the 2% dividend doesn't hurt either.

Type of Stock: A South African company specializing in fuel and chemical technologies.

Price Target: If the Bear Stearns report is correct, this stock is a solid buy at its current price near $40. But this stock can be volatile, and you might want to wait and see if you can grab it around $38 or even lower.

Hilary Kramer is a financial editor and money coach for AOL and an authority on investing. Visit her at www.hilarykramer.com.

This week's inventory report from the Energy Information Administration showed big jumps in both oil and gasoline inventories which has in turn applied downward pressure on oil prices. After larger than expected inventory gains the price of oil has now fallen by $1.02 today to $62.15.

But what is bad news to oil investors comes as positive news to those struggling to keep up with the price of gasoline. Analysts had been expecting to see gasoline inventories rise by about 1.1 million barrels last week but we were treated to a nice surprise jump of 1.7 million barrels.

One of the big reasons for the current record high gasoline prices has been the lack of refinery production over the last couple of months so it is definitely good news to see inventories rising faster than expected. But they are still operating a bit under where analysts had been hoping to see. Production rose to 89.5% capacity last week, which was a rise of about 0.5% over the previous week, but still slightly under the 90% output that analysts had thought we would be seeing.

Oil inventories showed an increase of one million barrels while analysts had been expecting to see a jump of 100,000 barrels.

So hopefully we are seeing a trend that will ultimately lead to gasoline prices stabilizing. I still don't think that we are going to be seeing prices retreating anytime soon with the summer driving months coming up fast, but I do believe that prices should begin to level off. Now that the refineries are getting back up to speed things should slowly start to get back to normal.

GE ended the day at $33.71, up 51 cents, a 1.54% leap in its price. What caused this leap? Certainly there doesn't seem to be too much exciting going on in the series of press releases coming out of GE's PR department that would be catching people's attention. Many had attributed GE's surge in price to the newfound confidence in a more stable Middle East and positive news on oil.

Is there something else in effect, though? GE recently announced it was acquiring Kinder Morgan, a natural gas distribution company. Certainly some seem to think that GE's getting further into the energy business is a good thing. In a period of time when energy profits have never been higher, investors might be responding to GE's latest company purchase with a vote of confidence.