[adorno]

"the Saudis and Russians have declared war against US shale energy companies. It seems they weren't happy with American energy independence

Independence means using our own oil, and not having to import any from anywhere.

The oil glut will stop when the U.S. goes completely independent of any foreign oil. We can produce our own and use only our own.

Let the Saudis and Russians fight it out over exporting to other countries.

[Dave W]

Look, this oil independence is completely misunderstood. We pump about 13 million barrels of oil a day. However, as a nation, we consume 20 millioin barrels of oil a day.

We still need to import 7 million barrels a day. We are not truly energy independent.

But through our refineries, we do make enough gas, diesel and other fuels to be energy dependent...we export the finished product but the basic barrel of oil, we still need to import.

Obviously, with the US increasing production the last three years, this has caused the price of oil to decrease - hurting Saudi Arabia and particularly Russia. So through the marketplace, both countries pumped as much oil as they could to hurt the shale producers hoping to force them out of business for good to shore up their share of the market and increase the price.

They tried this during the Obama administration and the result was the shale producers were able to decrease the cost of producing a barrel of oil - but there are limits.

Russia and Saudi Arabia are using the supply and demand rule to run the producers out of business - all is fair in the capitalist world. We've tried to hurt them by the US pumping so much oil the price goes down and we have been successful and they are fighting back.