US oil production tops Saudi Arabia

[Deus Naturae]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-04/u-s-seen-as-biggest-oil-producer-after-overtaking-saudi.html

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Maxwell]

Excellent news!

[Simfan34]

Excellent news!

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Now nationalize it.

[Deus Naturae]

Now nationalize it.

Great idea.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Now nationalize it.

Great idea.

LOL @ that website

[Illuminati Blood Drinker]

Now nationalize it.

And drop the Sauds like a hot rock.

[AggregateDemand]

I still remember when Nancy Pelosi offered to open the strategic oil reserve to alleviate our trade imbalance. I didn't realize she was a comedian.

Another cornerstone of the Republican platform has now been adopted by Democrats who've been confronted with the consequences of anti-supply policy. I wonder how small the Bush deficits would have been if he were pulling free money out of the ground?

[Redalgo]

As usual, the U.S. continues to march in the wrong direction.

[Deus Naturae]

As usual, the U.S. continues to march in the wrong direction.

The right direction being towards Riyadh?

[Redalgo]

The right direction being towards Riyadh?

Someone will buy Saudi oil regardless of whether the U.S. wants it. Upping production of oil in the States merely draws out and further intensifies the extent to which our economy and communities are designed around an energy source that is not always going to be here for us and in the meanwhile makes it convenient for most consumers to ignore serious environmental concerns tied to their lifestyles.

Expensive fuel would at least create incentive for the private sector to scheme up something new and workable - in contrast to eventually having people like me take a top-down, statist approach to the issue that will almost certainly be more coercive, less efficient, enormously controversial, and involve massive public expenditures. Someone needs to be looking at the big picture here.

[Blue3]

It's to buy more time until we get more wind power, more solar power, more CNG vehicles, better batteries and infrastructure for electric cars, and hopefully eventually fusion power.

[Deus Naturae]

The right direction being towards Riyadh?

Someone will buy Saudi oil regardless of whether the U.S. wants it. Upping production of oil in the States merely draws out and further intensifies the extent to which our economy and communities are designed around an energy source that is not always going to be here for us and in the meanwhile makes it convenient for most consumers to ignore serious environmental concerns tied to their lifestyles.

Expensive fuel would at least create incentive for the private sector to scheme up something new and workable - in contrast to eventually having people like me take a top-down, statist approach to the issue that will almost certainly be more coercive, less efficient, enormously controversial, and involve massive public expenditures. Someone needs to be looking at the big picture here.

You admit that an increase in fuel costs (which I agree is inevitable) will incentivize private entrepreneurs to discover/develop solutions, yet you also claim that our eventual inability to continue using oil will be catastrophic? Why would they be able to come up with a solution if costs were to increase now but not in the future?

[GaussLaw]

Excellent news!

[Redalgo]

Why would they be able to come up with a solution if costs were to increase now but not in the future?

When there is still an abundance of supply we have the luxury of calmly undergoing a gradual, relatively painless transition. Waiting for decades - or perhaps even centuries - before getting serious about it would greatly increase the degree to which climate change worsens, impose high fuel prices on poorer countries where alternatives would not yet be within reach, create tension between the U.S. and other major consumers of oil, and put us at risk of suffering serious economic shocks - waiting until the last moment gets many people freaked out and behaving in irrational, emotionally-charged ways.

I honestly do not trust consumers to be educated and forwards-looking enough to make responsible choices on a handful of issues like this. If they were perfectly informed, perfectly self-interested, and perfectly choosing preferences in the context of having responsible values this would not be an issue.

It's to buy more time until we get more wind power, more solar power, more CNG vehicles, better batteries and infrastructure for electric cars, and hopefully eventually fusion power.

Which would be great if it were true, but I do not get the impression that either major party in the U.S. is serious about ditching fossil fuels so long as they affect the economies of state and communities to which they feel pressured to pander. All of the congressional candidates in my state this cycle, for example, are in the pro-fossil fuel camp. One of the Democratic contenders took a big risk leading with his opposition to more coal mining and pipelines and got resoundingly crushed in the primaries for it.

[Frodo]

Combined with our status as the Saudi Arabia of natural gas, Europe now has a reliable energy alternative to Russia. 

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

As President Romney said about former President Obama "“This has not been Mr. Oil or Mr. Gas or Mr. Coal.”

[Simfan34]

Combined with our status as the Saudi Arabia of natural gas, Europe now has a reliable energy alternative to Russia. 

This is an important point that has really been overlooked in the whole sanctions debate, for whatever reason. I remember seeing a paper that showed, even with the costs of liquefaction for transport, shipping, and re-gasification, US natural gas would come just about even in terms of price with Russian natural gas. I think it was from the Brookings Institute, I'll have to look.

There still is the problem, however, that the US lacks the ability to export as much LNG as would be required to satisfy European demand, even if we did produce enough to meet it (on top of our own needs). There was an article in the Times, I think it was, a few months ago that more less pointed that even though we're adding all this processing capacity, most of these projects exist more on paper than they actually do at ports, and won't really start opening until 2017-2020.

But Congress has been dragging its feet, as usual, on expanding permits for LNG exports to European states, which is rather unfortunate and purposeless.

The right direction being towards Riyadh?

Someone will buy Saudi oil regardless of whether the U.S. wants it. Upping production of oil in the States merely draws out and further intensifies the extent to which our economy and communities are designed around an energy source that is not always going to be here for us and in the meanwhile makes it convenient for most consumers to ignore serious environmental concerns tied to their lifestyles.

Personally, I consider Saudi Arabia to be a far more active threat to our planet, or at least the well-being, in aggregate, of the people on it, than climate change.

I would hazard that many people here have a distaste for the Saudis due to their patently mediaeval (considering that the Middle East was generally more humanistic than Western Europe during the Middle Ages, it's probably giving them too much credit) views towards most things dealing with society, and it's by no means an invalid critique. But that really doesn't affect people beyond their borders. Sure, adulterers are stoned, there are no elections, and women cannot drive, but it none of that particularly affects non-residents in manner beyond the emotional, if it all.

If that was all the Saudis did, there really wouldn't be that much of an issue here beyond the support petroleum purchases lend to state oppression- which is essentially has been the norm amongst petroleum exporting states. But it is what the Saudis (and to a lesser extent, the Emiratis and Qataris) use their oil money for outside their borders that is the threatening thing about them- funding the spread of their intolerant Wahhabi fundamentalism across the world.

It would be hard to exaggerate the effects that this has had on, well, the world. The alliance between Wahhabism and the Saud Dynasty dates back to very beginning of their prominence in the mid-18th century; it is an integral and inseparable part of the Saudi state. It's the sort of belief- indeed, it is the exact sort of puritanical belief that gave us al-Qaeda. Everywhere so-called "Islamic" terror is, the hand of the Saudis is what is actually not far behind.

And, once again, I have to significantly truncate a post because of its otherwise horrific length. This originally reached over 1200 words and I was perhaps half-done with making my point.