The thought came to me that, like the indications that Russia could, if they wanted to, place significant strain on our domestic cyber infrastructure, there have recently been cases of sabotage to two electric cables causing blackouts in northern Germany and leaks in the Nord Stream pipelines causing concerns in the Baltic area, Russia is reminding everyone not to mess with them.
It’s like the lady who sat in the dentist’s chair. As he leaned over to start to poke at her, she grabbed him by his “private parts”, Shocked, he asked “What did you do that for”? to which she answered “We’re not going to hurt each other are we”?
…or we can free-up our own energy resources and companies to make production of oil and gas here do exactly what it did last time dramatically increase production and drive prices down…hurting Russian income from energy, and our energy production is cleaner than the foreign sources.
We are amazingly hypocritical and downright stupid if we choose Venezuelan or Iranian oil production over US sources.
I’m wondering if you have specifics rather than platitudes.
I ask because I have read that oil companies are sitting on 9,000 unused oil leases which they could open up at any time, but choose not to. Whether that is for economic reasons, or they have just bought the leases to “park them” to keep them out of competitors hands I do not know, but it seems that the issue is not the government somehow mismanaging, but corporations not working in the public interest. (5,000 of those 9,000 were issued in 2021 alone, the most in a single year in decades.)
Since it takes 4 years, on average, for a lease to begin producing - if the company exploits it at all - it would seem that “opening up” will do nothing in the short term. A faster way to energy independence would be to massively ramp up certain renewables, and use them to substitute for fossil fuels being burned to produce electricity.
You can put up a solar farm in a year. A windmill farm in two, depending on location. (Midwest farmland is cheap and pretty exploitable. Best of all, at least for wind power, you don’t lost any sizable fraction of farmland in the deal.)
None of this will solve the problem, but then neither will airy complaints about “freeing up our own energy resources”, which as best I can tell, we have already done.
I it is my experience that most people targeted by a professional intelligence operation will be compromised. As every U. S. Government employee has had their personal file compromised in a cyber attack, every department in every place in the country is vulnerable.
We could see massive clandestine attacks into the heart of the USA if state actors chose.
Of course producing electricity to reduce oil usage only works if vast numbers of the EV fence sitters and EV skeptics go out and buy an EV in the next year. I doubt that there is enough EV production capacity to matter in the next year.
(Could also be people replacing NG furnaces with heat pumps, etc.)
What makes you think we are doing that? The US is a The US is a net oil exporter. We produce more than we consume. However, oil is a fungible commodity and the price is set on the world market. If Saudi Arabia and Putin decide to cut back on production, we feel it at the pump. Same thing in Canada, their gas prices move in lockstep with ours, and they’ve an oil independent for decades. See this interactive chart at Gas Buddy for details.
What you won’t hear on Foxnews is the real limitation on increasing US oil and gas production had 0.0 to do with leasing, although that’s the narrative they are selling. The true limitation is financing. Banks and private equity lost boatloads of money in fracking and they are not eager to repeat the experiment. Approximately 400 of the 500 private fracking companies are losing money and are unlikely ever to repay their debts.
Unless there is a sustained, long term increase in oil prices, the economics don’t support significant new oil and gas development in the United States. This was all playing out well before the last election, by the way.
I do not perceive that there is a macro economic model that would predict sustained long term increases in oil
prices. Prices above economically neutral (my estimate is about 60 dollars per barrel in today’s dollars) will slow the economy driving down demand, increase production marginally, and shift consumption to other forms of energy and increase energy efficiency across the economy.
These reactions will drive the price of oil down and so sustained high prices simply not posible.
I don’t pretend to know how it really works. But doesn’t the world market set the price (instantly) just for the oil sold on the margins? Many suppliers and consumers (refineries?) probably have contracted prices, at least in the short to medium term.
@syke6 - Thanks for the info - never knew! That’s why I come here. To learn and be exposed to stuff I wouldn’t normally be exposed to. This place “broadens my horizons”.
I hope to broaden some folks horizons once in a while too
Some 50-odd years ago, a couple CIA ops were blown. The CIA became a joke overnight as a gang that can’t do anything right. One sage pointed out at that time, that we never hear about their really successful operations. How long did it take to declassify the CIA’s role in breaking the embassy employees out of Tehran? Thirty years? Back when it happened, all I heard was that it was a 100% Canadian op.
If Putin’s interests were soundly honked up by CIA hackers, would he admit it? Would the US admit it, as admitting it would disclose USian capabilities?
the edit button too!!
