(PIRI) Calls for New White House Policy: Unfair Trade Endangers U.S. Oil Industry Too

Business Wire ^ | 5/18/17 | The Panhandle Import Reduction Initiative

[brownwill6767]

AMARILLO, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In a letter directed to the President of the United States and received by the White House, the founders of (PIRI), the Panhandle Import Reduction Initiative representing thousands of independent small producers of oil in the Southwest United States wrote, “We call upon President Donald J. Trump for a second Presidential Memorandum to order the Secretary of Commerce, to establish the crude oil industry as a “Core” industry to be added to steel, aluminum, vehicles, aircraft, shipbuilding and semiconductors. Crude oil should be recognized as one of the critical elements of US manufacturing and defense industrial bases, which we must defend against unfair trade practices and other abuses.”

[brownwill6767]

The PIRI founders further stated in the letter “Following the Presidential Memorandum on the case for steel against Chinese export practices that you signed, PIRI further calls for an immediate Investigation by the Department of Commerce of Saudi Arabia and OPEC abuse between August 2014 and March 2016 of the American oil industry by expanding production to lower world oil prices to destabilize and cause hardships to American producers mainly of light tight oil (shale oil). This was an announced effort to undermine and shut-down producers with higher costs of production. According to one estimate some 150 US companies filed bankruptcy and $150 billion in capital outlay postponed or cancelled. More than 300,000 US industry-related jobs were lost.”

Mr. President, American superiority in energy security means self-sufficiency: Throwing off these trade shackles then is the fight for fair trade in Steel and Aluminum, we must prevail in the fight for US oil producers too.”

[Nifster]

You post essentially the same thing just moments apart.

For your own edification perhaps you ought to check out just how much oil we import since the shale oil revolution

[zeestephen]

Protectionism is a great political idea - until EVERY industry in your country begins to ask for protection from competitors.

After that, prices and inflation surge.

[zeestephen]

Re: How much oil we import since the shale oil revolution...

In 2016:

Our total production was about 9 million barrels per day.

Tight shale oil production was about 4.5 million barrels per day.

We consumed more than 19 million barrels per day.

[Nifster]

We import the largest portion of our oil from Canada

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=727&t=6

[brownwill6767]

First off of course the global and D.C. Elites refuse to admit we ever HAD or will have OPEC price wars that were and are devastating to us.
We are not on a level playing field with ANY Cartel that at its own
whim CONTROLS world oil prices and thus every aspect of free trade.
This is long overdue and has much support to make US oil production “core” to national security alongside steel and Aluminium removing the
fetters of unfair trade.i would argue this is a great move for President Trump! Don’t you think it is far better to put America first and OPEC last in energy? Propelling a far more lasting economic and geopolitical oil victory than the Bush-Obama-Clinton status quo?

[arthurus]

Oil does NOT need to be protected. It is not something that will go away if we don’t raise the price to American consumers. Americans are the best most efficient producers of oil in the world. Americans will continue to progressively reduce the cost of extracting the oil and continue to raise the estimates of recoverable oil in the ground.It is what has happened. It is what is happening. It is what will happen. Protecting the industry now will reduce the drive to greater efficiency and drain American consumers further. Yall Mercantilist tariff freaks will complain right along with the rest of us when we have to pay 50% more for our gasoline and more for our groceries and everything else because we put tariffs on foreign oil, tariffs that actually raise the world price of oil and push more money to the jihadists.

[brownwill6767]

And you are somehow NOT getting the fact that eliminating the ongoing national security earthquakes of oil price wars actually furthers AMERICAN oil self-sufficiency. You are buying into the BUSH globalism that clearly failed the American people which is just one great reason to want President succeed with these fair trade policies.

Look you know we you would have us go back to the days of BUSH-CLINTON-OBAMA and they really did not care too much about oil but the lobbyists got rich. Ask any man on the street the GOP got rich on OBAMA but did not (could have) want to bring him down. Things were too good inside the beltway while Americans suffered and are suffering.

Lastly, you think OPEC 2.0 going to work? I don’t but the OPEC leadership does and they want to reduce their exports or our imports of foreign oil, maybe our imports rather than being too low are really quite high?

[brownwill6767]

And you are somehow NOT getting the fact that eliminating the ongoing national security earthquakes of oil price wars actually furthers AMERICAN oil self-sufficiency. You are buying into the BUSH globalism that clearly failed the American people which is just one great reason to want President Trump to succeed with these fair trade policies.

Look you know you would have us go back to the days of BUSH-CLINTON-OBAMA and they really did not care too much about oil but the lobbyists got rich. Ask any man on the street the GOP got rich on OBAMA but did not (could have) want to bring him down. Things were too good inside the beltway while Americans suffered and are suffering.

Lastly, you think OPEC 2.0 going to work? I don’t but the OPEC leadership does and they want to reduce their exports or our imports of foreign oil, maybe our imports rather than being too low are really quite high?

[arthurus]

There is no oil price war any more. The price of oil will hover around $50 and slowly decline as Americans get more efficient at producing the stuff. America now determines the world price of oil. We have enough accessible in the ground to last us for the foreseeable future. Why would we want to interfere with it now? Yall tariff nuts are determined to give the government more of our money, albeit indirectly. You are so damned into taxing Americans, which is what a tariff does. I don’t understand why you think you are even some sort of small government conservative. There are industries for which a tariff or import restrictions might be useful but Oil is NOT one of them. We do NOT lose the capacity to produce as much as we need just because we turn down or off some wells from time to time. It is not like it was 40 years ago when turning off a well meant it had to be reinstalled to make it flow again.

[jdsteel]

Arabs killed US oil production in the early ‘70’s and then raped us after production fell. They tried to do the same thing to frackers over the last 5 years...with far less success. I support adding crude to the list of crucial products because it IS. And will be for a long time.

[Grampa Dave]

“Protectionism becomes socialism.”

Protectionism is a great political idea - until EVERY industry in your country begins to ask for protection from competitors.

After that, prices and inflation surge.

Frédéric Bastiat
Economist

Claude-Frédéric Bastiat was a French economist and author who was a prominent member of the French Liberal School. He developed the economic concept of opportunity cost, and introduced the Parable of the Broken Window. Wikipedia

Born: June 29, 1801, Bayonne, France
Died: December 24, 1850, Rome, Italy
School or tradition: Classical liberalism
Contributions: The Law (La Loi)
Quotes:

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.

When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.

Frédéric Bastiat - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frédéric_Bastiat

[Grampa Dave]

Forgot to ping you when I posted this!

[Admin Moderator]

Quit abusing the frontpage sidebar.

[mbrfl]

I`m with you. Clearly a balance needs to be struck. Without a doubt, NAFTA, along with other of our trade agreements and policies, has become destructive to our nation`s economic security and well being. But it did help to weaken the stranglehold the Unions had on much of our economy.

[arthurus]

You just like higher prices. It is NOT an essential product in that we won't run out of it or even run low if the world cuts us off.So long as we don't hamper production with onerous regulation and restrictionsand taxes we will have no problem with oil. If we "protect" oil we will make the industry less efficient and put American oil at a disadvantage. The government can do Oil or any other industry no positive favors. It can oly do negative ones like getting out of the way of production. The same goes with those other industries. American over taxation and regulation is what has chased them out of the country.

Many people who think they are conservative are bemused by that word "protection."It sounds like something a patriot would want to do.But it is like the government giving women and children and minorities "protection." It is protection for the government and for government corruption and deleterious to Aerican business and industry. American industry and American workers are still the most efficient in the world/ We have fallen behind because we have added far heavier tax and regulation and health" insurance burdens that have to be paid for out of production which raises the costs of production higher than the same businesses can do abroad. That and only that is why we lose our industrial base. Adding a layer of "protection" will speed the loss. Government interference and regulation has also created the financial superpowerful entities that are destroying the economy all on their own. If the government did not protect them they could not oppress us.

Arabs didn't kill oil production in the 70s. They caused a blip in production that cannot happen now. The blip was institutionalized by government price controls and new restrictions. If we had reacted to the more recent arab price runup the same way we did in the 70s we would have had the same result though not so long because fracking was right then becoming a viable technique. Because we let the market determine the price, even with Saudi cartel actions, and fracking development could be paid for by the oilcos and was ramped up. The result is that we have stable low oil prices now. In constant dollars gas now is a lot cheaper than it was in 1960 and it is because we did not interfere in that market after the 70s disaster. other than to cut off oil sources by rules. Well , that has ended, too. We did not "protect" the oil industry this time. Why do you insist on screwing that up? Just the designation of Essential Industry irresistibly tempts the congress and the bureaus to regulate and interfere and tax. If it is officially an Essential Industry then the Congress is sure as hell going to regulate and tax it to death to the point that we MUST restrict imports and then domestic prices will rise to the stratosphere instead of sitting stably at about $50.

[jdsteel]

We disagree. The global trade in oil is not and has not been either fair or free for 50 years. OPEC’s effect on our country and the effects on our economy were one hell of a “blip”. My realization of that in no way means I want higher oil prices. On the contrary, by shielding US production from hostile foreign attack we protect production and lower prices. You seem to think the free market was operating now in oil: check out who the major producers are.