First, the cause of high oil prices is not–as many conservative pundits claim–speculation. There are ways that futures markets (which are basically bets on whether the “spot” price of oil will go up or down) can affect the price of oil, but if you believe economists like Krugman (and many others). If people were hoarding supplies of oil without reselling them, then you could argue that there was speculation, but people aren’t hoarding oil isn’t and the futures price is lower than the spot price, not higher.

Second, selling half the strategic petroleum reserve all in one burst would be almost pointless. In terms of global supply and demand, the SPR holds an insignificant amount of oil. There are 727 million barrels of oil in the SPR. At present, the US imports 9.6 million barrels per day. That’s per day. That’s 75 days worth of US oil imports (alone) in the SPR. If you take the whole world into account, I’d speculate (again very off the cuff) that the total effect of releasing half the SPR would be a very modest decline in oil prices, at best.

Third, though Gingrich did not mention it, drilling in Alaska and such will have almost no effect on the total world supply of oil. Such drilling would have almost no effect on the price of gas at the pump.

As far as I know, there’s simply no quick fix for high oil prices–these prices are driven by supply and demand, not speculation–beyond finding non-oil-based sources of renewable energy. That requires lots of political will, R&D, subsidies for clean energy, time, and luck. It also probably requires a significant shift in how we live our lives. The age of sprawl may have to come to an end if we want to collectively live within our productive means.