Politics Thread

I can update this for you. "Corrupt authoritarian war crimes dictator says Anti-democratic coup-attempting former president of the US is being prosecuted unfairly by the judges he himself put in place.

Impeachment vote in the house not even taken because they can't even get a majority repulican house to find merit in an impeachment, so instead are just doing committee investigations"

 

I love some good politics, but I think we have all been here long enough to know that this thread will pretty much devolve into "my team is right and I am smart, your team is wrong and you are stupid" pretty soon.

Do we want to do it?

 

No, me!

 

I wish politicians would stop promising cheap oil, because its counter-intuitive and actually damaging to American interests.

I know this sounds wrong, but its a lot more complicated that what lying politicians are saying.

Let me explain.

Can we agree that being dependant on Saudi (OPEC) oil is a bad?

The Saudis can, at will, reduce production or increase production depending on their mood. This is why America needs to be as energy independent as possible. Even though there are a lot of oil reserves in North America, they are mostly oil sands (in Canada) or shale deposits in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. This kind of oil is expensive to obtain and requires a lot refining to get it to its usable state.

The reason why Saudi oil is cheap is because its plentiful, easy to get at and a higher quality (lower sulphur content). North American oil production is expensive and requires a lot more refining.

So why not just drill more wells all over Alaska, Texas, Alberta?

Here comes the fun part, the Dallas Federal Reserve says that to break even on a new well in North America, oil needs to be at $61/barrel. This is the cost of drilling, transporting, refining and getting it to market.

If oil is below $61/barrel, its simply not profitable for privately run oil companies to drill new wells. Its cheaper for them to buy oil from other countries and import into the states then to drill our own oil.

Here is a chart of crude oil, note the drops below $60 in 2015 and 2020 (covid)


And here is the corresponding oil rig count:



As you can see, low oil prices mean no new wells get drilled, which means less US production.

Low oil prices also means smaller oil companies in the States go out of business. Less small local producers, less local oil coming into the market, more dependence on OPEC.

Politicians KNOW this. Trump, Desantis and who ever comes next have advisors that KNOW this fact. They WANT US oil production to die so they can rely on OPEC which is what the Saudis want, and they pay out big time through donations and bank rolling election campaigns.

Summary: Low oil prices fuck up local production and keeps us dependant on foreign oil. Any politician that preaches low oil is an agent of the Saudis who want to keep us dependant on their oil.

 

Im glad this helped!

I hate seeing both Liberals and Conservatives falling the same the bullshit time after time. Im not saying both sides are the same, but another example is the recent Alaska drilling news:


Biden bad!

He is not letting us drill in Alaska!

Truth of the matter is nobody wants to drill in Alaska. Its simply not economically feasible to get your equipment there, drill, pull the oil out, get it to a port... There is no infrastructure to support any of it, so no privately held oil company wants to touch ANWR because its simply not economically viable.

Yet we see time and time again how a Republican president will open it up to "ensure energy independence" and conservatives cheer and liberals cry!

Time passes, not a single oil rig is deployed.

Then a democrat comes into office and cancels the leases, and liberals cheer and conservatives cry!

Nothing actually changed, nobody wants to drill there because its too expensive. Yet politicians keep throwing that football around for points.