Call me cynical, though: I don’t think Sarah Palin had any idea what she was talking about, any more than I think John McCain had any idea what he was talking about when he said she “knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America”. ~Hilzoy

What on earth is Palin talking about?  The commodity is fungible (check), and Congress won’t allow export bans, but the domestic markets need the oil first.  She forgot to mention that we must not blink.

I think I may be able to translate the statement out of its original Alaskan.  It might be that she is referring to the old export ban on Alaskan North Slope oil, which was finally lifted in 1996 after the GOP Congress voted against the ban in 1995.  The law had required Alaskan crude to be used domestically rather than sold to markets in Asia, and the ban removed the incentive for the development of domestic oil resources in California.  However, the gist of what Palin said suggests that she favors reinstating the export ban to mandate that Alaskan oil be sold domestically, but if I understand this correctly it seems that reinstating an export ban on Alaskan oil would discourage precisely the kind of offshore and domestic drilling in California that one assumes the proponents of “drill, baby, drill” favor.  So it’s not clear that her remarks make any sense, regardless of how you interpret them.

Update: Tapper calls the response “a less-than-well-articulated non-answer.”  So we can see that she is comfortable with McCain’s style of campaigning.