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Hate to say it, but we need to increase oil and gas output immediately
- thatfrenchguy 5y agoBeing good at one thing does not mean you’re good at something else, news at 10 here.
- DeWilde 5y agoYou think it is a smarter move to let the gas price get higher?
- pjc50 5y agoI think it's a necessary part of a climate transition! It's just politically very difficult to do unless it happens by accident.
- kennywinker 5y agoIt feels to me more like a "you made your bed, now it's time to lie in it" situation. Yeah high gas prices are going to hurt people, but we had plenty of warning this kind of thing was coming, and plenty of chances to steer away from it.
- throwaway894345 5y agoAgreed that we’ve had plenty of chances, and I’m sure watching others suffer for their actions feels very cathartic to the partisan variety of environmentalist; however, abruptly driving up prices on everything is certain to make climate initiatives deeply unpopular.
- lordloki 5y agoToo many people here don't understand human nature. High gas prices mean that self-proscribed "environmentalists" will be losing elections for the foreseeable future. Right now we should be focusing on energy independence and that means more oil and more investment into renewables.
- kennywinker 5y agoI guess I'm hoping it'll mean people drive less
- DeWilde 5y agoIt is that type of situation, and it would much better if only people could take it stoically. But that won't happen, economic hardship hurts a lot and people in democratic systems will just vote away any ecological provisions that are causing them pain.
- sto_hristo 5y agoYou have to realize that Western tech and known-how is at the center of any of those "good at" oil and gas exporters - who can only dig at best.
- thriftwy 5y agoThat's exactly the mindset which got us all where we are now.
- sto_hristo 5y agoHow so? And it's not a mindset or an opinion, but a fact a life. They dig, they sell and that just about a summary of their existence. USSR was the same. Once the Arab countries dropped the prices for a while, the whole thing shook and broke. Russian gas is still flowing to Europe, despite the brutal sanctions. Once those pipes stop pumping it, how long until Russia itself collapses on its own? No need to engage in direct confrontation with them.
- madengr 5y ago
- __s 5y agoFrom down thread: > Yeah i don't think the common American household can handle $5-6 gal Interesting how incentives work. Elsewhere countries are seeing $8/gal, had $6/gal before this all happened. But you consequently have more fuel efficient vehicles[1] & people reducing miles driven[2] (& don't tell me the US is big; Canada is bigger. There's plenty room for improvement) 1: https://morningconsult.com/2019/07/31/united-states-risks-lagging-internationally-on-fuel-economy https://morningconsult.com/2019/07/31/united-states-risks-la... 2: https://internationalcomparisons.org/environmental/transportation https://internationalcomparisons.org/environmental/transport...
- downrightmike 5y ago
- themgt 5y agoI've lived in Europe for a few years total without ever owning a car and rarely feeling the lack of one, which would be effectively impossible outside 2-3 cities in the USA. I would be highly in favor of completely overhauling US infrastructure into medium density walkable towns and cities and switching the ~300 million cars on the road to more fuel efficient models, but jacking up the price of gas by 3x in 18 months will just impoverish and immiserate millions of Americans who will have to choose between paying for gas vs. food, rent, health care. It's like saying this gym rat can squat 450 lbs and is much healthier for it, so you ought to get off the couch and squat 450 lbs tomorrow.
- listless 5y agoThe US is way more spread out than Europe, and our current infrastructure gets a D+ rating. Necessity is the mother of invention, but we are seriously behind in terms of transit. This is going to hurt the US more than people expect. This is why I would be shocked to see a ban on Russian oil. We simply cannot absorb that shock to our economy. https://www.thecivilengineer.org/news-center/latest-news/item/1245-us-infrastructure-scores-a-d-more-than-4-5-trillion-need-to-be-invested-by-2025 https://www.thecivilengineer.org/news-center/latest-news/ite...
- 5y ago
- thriftwy 5y agoFor decades we were repeatedly told that Russia (and also Ukraine) is a no-good land which can't produce anything useful other than oil (transit), which is a commodity anyway. Now it turns out that both oil and wheat output were quite crucial. Too bad it did not impact the prosperity and political stability of neither Russia nor Ukraine. We did not get the "better peace" even as the rest of world relied on our commodities.
- xiphias2 5y agoEverybody knows that Russian gas is an important commodity. Actually it's just one more reason for US oil producers to go into war against Russia as long as they don't have to pay for it.
- downrightmike 5y agoPretty sure we can starve out russia as their current moves are clearly death throes.
- thriftwy 5y agoIn Russia life is mostly back to normal after the initial shock. Not sure what is the military situation, but that's what you have.
- downrightmike 5y agoYup, keep up appearances while they can
- bilal4hmed 5y agoI saw this floating around my Linkedin today, dont know how much is valid but worth looking into: I have seen so much misunderstanding of how oil works online this week. 1) You don’t just “open a valve” to increase oil production. It is extremely capital & time-intensive to extract hydrocarbons. You have to get permits approved, construct locations, drill the well, frac the well, build production infrastructure etc. You are talking a 6-month cycle at best. Then you layer other constraints on top of that: -labor shortages cause a limited supply of oilfield services so you can’t bring wells on as quickly -steel shortages make sourcing pipe difficult 2) Now you’re asking O&G companies to ramp up capex to increase production. It’s a very tough ask when the feds have created so much uncertainty from a regulatory perspective with rhetoric and actions such as banning drilling on federal lands, pulling pipeline permits, etc. Essentially the message is: “There isn’t a place for oil and gas in this world, you’re being phased out.” It’s hard to make investments with those headwinds, but now that’s what’s being asked. 3) Americans have become addicted to cheap oil and gas. That was enabled by investors subsidizing the costs over the last decade and incinerating their capital. Now investors want O&G companies to focus on sustainable free cashflow and return capital. Shocker. This has caused O&G companies to go into maintenance mode and limit production growth. 4) Activists have been pushing for the divestment of fossil fuels. Countless endowment funds, institutions, banks and other entities have announced their withdrawal from O&G. (Preventing the ability to finance energy and support humans isn’t looking so noble now) 5) Now oil and gas companies are being painted as the bad guys for not producing enough oil. Despite years of capital being sucked out of the space, increasing hurdles to build infrastructure and activists attacking the industry, it’s now the O&G companies who are at fault. They are at fault for something that they can not physically do in such a short amount of time. They operate at low prices and give Americans an extremely prosperous life, the response: “You’re killing the planet, we’re going to end you, leave it in the ground” They stop chasing production growth and leave it in the ground, the response: “Greedy oil companies only care about profits, they don’t care about human suffering or else they would increase production” People in the O&G industry have every right to be upset right now. They wake up and work hard to power the world and support human flourishing, just to be told by critics on twitter that they’re evil. Now those critics are in desperate need of help and the only people that can save them are the ones they have been demonizing for the last 10 years. Bad energy policy and misguided activists have led to this problem. Full stop. People are getting a hard dose of reality on energy production and realizing how critical it is to society. The oil companies didn’t cause this.
- labrador 5y ago
- humanrebar 5y agoYou clearly don't live thirty minutes from the nearest Wal-Mart and 45 minutes from the nearest big box hardware store. A lot of folks live places with absolutely no delivery options. Not even pizza. If you don't have access to a truck, you don't buy certain things.
- Ekaros 5y agoStation wagon and a trailer could solve most of these issues. Likely for less than a truck costs. There really is lot of alternatives or a van if you regularly need more stuff transported. I see rather few things that you actually need a truck for.
- mgarfias 5y agoStation wagon won’t pull 10,000+ lbs.
- Ekaros 5y agoAnd how often does your average person need to pull 5 tons of stuff?
- humanrebar 5y agoSome average people own cows. Others camp in fifth wheels. So it depends?
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoI'm in my van right now, out on some BLM land with others parked in most directions. The fifth wheelers can ONLY be hauled by a truck because of the way they are designed. Regular hitch-pulled trailers come in all sorts of sizes, and over the weekend we were parked next to two that got pulled by SUVs. But sure, I take your point, there are legitimate, "ordinary" needs to pull a lot of weight sometimes. The question is whether the frequency of these really justifies this sort vehicle being someone's daily driver.
- jleyank 5y agoWell, better watch the refinery limit as you can pump all of the oil you'd like but it's not useful if you can't refine it and ship it to where it's needed. Fracking can handle natural gas and fortunately the northern hemisphere is leaving winter behind.
- JaimeThompson 5y agoIf we do this then the oil companies should be on the hook for all cleanup costs no more of the situation in places like Texas where the oil companies get the tax payers to pay for their damage. They should also be questioned as to why they have so many leases they haven't used and why the active wells in the Permian Basis are not running at their max safe rate of extraction currently.
- Proven 5y ago
- apendleton 5y agoSeems like most folks are responding on the level of individual vehicle owners, who ostensibly deserve what they get for buying a hummer (a view I'm sympathetic to), but separate from all of that: Russia continues to be able to sell oil and gas, and high oil/gas prices bolster their revenues, blunt the effects of Western sanctions, and fund the continued war effort. There's a geopolitical interest in wanting to bring down oil prices, in addition to the domestic-political one. Increasing production might be an option. Loosening sanctions on Venezuela and/or Iran might be another. We may have to pick our battles.
- moistly 5y agoGod forbid people suffer the consequences of their vehicle purchasing decisions.
- 1e-9 5y agoHigher prices will result in increased production. We don't need to motivate producers beyond that. There's plenty of potential from non-Russian sources. It will take months though. I think the biggest motivational issue will be expectations for the duration of any oil sanctions. If producers think it is likely to only be short-term, there won't be as much motivation to bring extra production online.
- chrismcb 5y agoI don't really care if we increase our production it not. We need to stop purchasing had from Russia. That is the first step. Perhaps we need to increase our production after that. And invest in more green energy. But first step is so the Russian oil