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The US is currently a net oil exporter, and has been for a few years. Now of course that's not the whole picture, but if push came to shove, the US could achie
by delecti 9mo ago
The US is currently a net oil exporter, and has been for a few years.
Now of course that's not the whole picture, but if push came to shove, the US could achieve energy independence (at least technologically, if not poitically).
- collinmcnulty 9mo agoTrue, the US could supply all of its energy needs through great effort and by making its population pay much higher energy prices. In contrast, if a country were to build around e.g. solar, and then all countries that made the panels embargoed them, the price of electricity would merely stop falling.
- pfannkuchen 9mo agoWhy would it necessarily be more expensive? The oil can be sold today profitably at today’s market rate. If there stopped being from the outside competition for the oil, wouldn’t that roughly balance out stopping the supply of oil from the outside?
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> If there stopped being from the outside competition for the oil, wouldn’t that roughly balance out stopping the supply of oil from the outside? In the short run, yes. In the long run you’d fuck up the economies of scale and profit incentives.
- pfannkuchen 9mo agoI think whether the economies of scale and profit incentives get fucked up depends on the size of the before and after markets we are talking about. For these to collapse, I believe we would need the international market for US oil specifically to be substantially larger than the entire domestic market for any oil. Is that true?
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> we would need the international market for US oil specifically to be substantially larger than the entire domestic market for any oil You just need U.S. producers to be insulated from international competition.