I agree with all your remarks. I wonder if the infrastructure is robust. The recent price increase to close to $44 a barrel wasn't related to pipeline capacity, oilfield development, oil tanker availability, or anything else of a plant capacity. I would count the futures market as part of the infrastructure, and that is where things have gone haywire for the moment. All the same there is now an instability in the system and that instability could continue and grow worse even while Putin and the Saudis and all act quickly every day. Rumors are having a strong effect, which wouldn't be the case if the infrastructure were strong.
The fact remains, however, that America is like a big OilsRUs store. How we go, so goes the world.
We supply the equipment and the technology to keep the oil industry going all over the world, in spite of what European countries would like to think.
If we are shackled by governmental and societal restraints here at home, it is reflected in the world oil market.
A tanker filling in Saudi must be diverted to Yokohama or Liverpool because we have tankers sitting offshore waiting to unload to facilities already full waiting for refineries to come online which are installing new scrubbers required by a new clean air mandate.
That bottleneck decreases the supply of thousands of oil products on the world market, and the price goes up.
All of a sudden the price of milk increases twenty cents - not because the cows are charging more for their milk, but because the containers used to carry the milk costs more.
Working women must allow more in their budget for the increased cost of cosmetics.
Retired people must try to divert more money from an already stretched budget to pay for their medicine.
Home prices increase because of the hundreds of items used in the building of a home which come directly from oil.
And so the dominoes fall all over the world.