Posted on 01/27/2016 5:40:37 AM PST by thackney
Boom and bust in the way of life in the oil patch.
Uh. I don’t understand where you are going with all this. You blame the oil and gas industry for the lack of jobs?
Low fuel prices help create jobs that extend far beyond the oil and gas field. Ending the oil export ban not only will lower fuel prices (saving jobs in other industrues) but also saves domestic oil and gas jobs. It also helps with our trade imbalance since we can export a higher quality crude product and import cheaper heavy crude that our refineries are set up for. It’s a win win
When industry wants to vanish to somewhere else or import cheap labor, that's the free market, too. When a baker is put out of business by social policy, somehow, the free market folks don't see that as the same sort of restraint of trade questioning the export of a critical resource or thousands of jobs is.
Do lower fuel prices create jobs in the US?
So, the answer really is dependent on the overall state of the economy as well as the fuel price itself.
I forecast some great prices on small cars.
It fuel remains this cheap, everybody is going to buy SUVs and pickups.
The manufacturers have to sell a certain percentage of high fuel econ cars to meet govt mandates.
PEAK OIL, PEAK OIL, PEAK OIL!
Not possible.
Exporting expensive light sweet oil and importing cheaper heavy sour, that our refineries are already optimized to use, keeps prices lower in the US.
Look, free trade, free market, makes job argument is all fine and dandy other than the fact that it is never applied across the board. It's only made as a justification for something of interest to larger corporations and industries. Keystone pipeline ? Creates jobs, no doubt. Increased oil and gas production ? Creates jobs, no doubt. Increased export of oil and gas ? Doesn't create a single additional job if overall production and recovery doesn't increase.
If there's no requirement to supply the domestic market first there's no reason to believe that a shortage here while sales boom overseas is of any great concern to the producers. After all, the domestic market can just deal with expensive industry and whether any industry other than their own is creating jobs is not their concern, right?
It's the difference between a wolf pack and a dozen independent feral dogs. Wolves care about the overall good of the pack, feral dogs don't. Most arguments about letting the free market work have, over the past few decades, have become arguments for the right to behave like a feral dog rather than a member of the pack.
Oil companies are really stupid. Now the low cost of crude makes people look away when they hear the US is exporting oil. (when not if)It goes back up to $100/bbl and the American people hear the the US is exporting oil it will be pitch fork and taorch time.
All things being equal, permitting that exchange is fine. Just lifting the ban on exports without that particular case being the specific exchange permitted doesn’t make sense as it works against energy independence.
That's exactly my point, larger industries and corporations appeal to the free market/free trade argument most often when they want to avoid fighting for a free market and free trade right here in the US. At the same time, they often donate for PR reasons to the very same groups that cause those restraints on trade.
” Just lifting the ban on exports without that particular case being the specific exchange permitted doesn’t make sense as it works against energy independence.”
If we are talking about energy independence, there is far greater negative effect to us by the destruction of the coal industry by Obama and the blockage of nuclear power.
Anything connected to export of oil is pittance compared to this.
“Oil companies are really stupid. Now the low cost of crude makes people look away when they hear the US is exporting oil. (when not if)It goes back up to $100/bbl and the American people hear the the US is exporting oil it will be pitch fork and taorch time. “
Not stupid, just not politically-connected and used as a punching bag. Americans are not being told the truth about ethanol which does NOT create independence but is a lobbying effort by Archer-Daniels-Midland, nor about wind and solar, which cannot ever be economically justified and requires PERMANENT govt subsidies like Amtrak.
There is much greater reason for pitchforks if Americans understood this, and they would be used on current politicians like Paul Ryan who authored the Omnibus bill that is once again funding wind and solar for years.
“Steerable directional drilling is the newer technology, which combined with hydro fracs, made the shale economical to produce.”
Nitpicking here, but the shales are generally not what is produced. This is widely misunderstood.
The shales are the source rocks indeed and sometimes can be produced, but generally it is rocks in the area, typically carbonates, that are the zone drilled and completed into.
Neither the Bakken or the Eagleford production comes from shales.
I am most familiar with the Bakken. The Bakken shale used to be the target but it was not fraccable due to its plasticity. After years of efforts, it was not until someone thought about the brittle carbonate zone between the upper and lower Bakken shales did the boom come to ND.
Targeting that zone made all the difference. It is unknown, but there is likely leakage from the shales into the carbonate zone that contributes to some of the production so yes, the shale there might be part of the production, but is definitely not the target of interest.
We already refine more than we use and export the surplus.
That said, there have been several refinery expansions to take in more of the light sweet oil.
But it doesn't make sense to to spend money to use a more expensive feedstock. If years from now, we are exporting a million a day of $100 oil, it will because we are offsetting it using $85 oil brought in, keeping prices lower in the US.
We are a large refinery source, we use lots of oil. It cost money to transport oil overseas. It always makes business to use it here first, if supply and demand are not out of sync, as currently exists in the Gulf Coast Light Sweet market.
Expecting the government to keep up with market changes would be foolish.
All of them. If the shoe fits...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.