The US Is Now Energy Independent (axios.com) 96
The U.S. produced more petroleum than it consumed in 2020, and the numbers were essentially in balance in 2021, according to the Energy Information Administration. Axios reports: The surge in oil prices taking place in 2022 has radically different implications for the U.S. economy -- and for key geopolitical relationships in the Middle East and Russia -- than in past episodes when energy prices have risen. In the past, when oil prices spiked, the impact on the U.S. economy was straightforward: It made America poorer, as more of our income went overseas to pay for imported energy. Now, after the shale gas revolution of the last 15 years, the impact is more subtle. Higher fuel prices disadvantage consumers and energy-intensive industries, yes. But there is a counteracting surge in incomes for domestic energy producers and their workers. Higher oil prices no longer depress overall measures of prosperity like GDP and national income, but rather shift it around toward certain regions. Texas and North Dakota win; Massachusetts and North Carolina lose.
As recently as 2010, America imported 9.4 million barrels a day of oil more than it exported. That had swung to a 650,000 barrel per day surplus in 2020, and preliminary numbers for 2021 show trade pretty much in balance last year. To the degree the U.S. does still import oil, more of it is coming from our closest ally. Canada was the source of 51% of U.S. petroleum imports in the first 10 months of 2021, compared with 8% from the Persian Gulf. By contrast, the Gulf states supplied more than 30% of American petroleum imports in 2008.
As recently as 2010, America imported 9.4 million barrels a day of oil more than it exported. That had swung to a 650,000 barrel per day surplus in 2020, and preliminary numbers for 2021 show trade pretty much in balance last year. To the degree the U.S. does still import oil, more of it is coming from our closest ally. Canada was the source of 51% of U.S. petroleum imports in the first 10 months of 2021, compared with 8% from the Persian Gulf. By contrast, the Gulf states supplied more than 30% of American petroleum imports in 2008.
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Everyone loves to bitch and moan about COVID restrictions when it involves yelling at an 81-year-old doctor on the boob tube. But I don't see Ron DeSandass performing public melodrama when it comes to a certain trillion-dollar Mouse and the world he inhabits. If the Gov didn't insist otherwise one might suspect he's motivated by something other than altruism!
sure. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: sure. (Score:2)
The article is stupid. Yeah, we sent dollar paper overseas for other people's limited resources. Those people just burned all the dollars they got or ate them. They certainly didn't use them to pay for American made goods.
That dollar circle makes the dollar stronger internationally and encourages a lot of secondary trading. It also creates an incentive to keep good relations between trading countries.
Finally, the US actually maintains energy independence because it has more of its own resources still locked
Re: sure. (Score:2)
But consider what that trade deficit says about the opinion of other countries on our currency.
Normally, as your deficit increases, it is counter balanced by depreciation of the currency. So your buying power goes down and imports become more expensive. This naturally shifts production domestically as it becomes cheaper.
BUT, other countries don't want this so they undercut their own production value and/or currencies so they are still cheaper. They basically have more confidence in the US dollar than their
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I was paying $40 to fill up my car during the Bush years while I was still in high school in Pennsylvania. I just paid $45 to fill up my tank in California.
If anything the price of gas has fallen or stayed the same while inflation has exploded.
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https://www.gasbuddy.com/stati... [gasbuddy.com]
I paid $4.95 for premium today.
At Cost Co it's like 4.50 ish.
Re: sure. (Score:3)
Paid 5.30 a gallon recently to fill up my 2015 Volt with the premium it requires. Fortunately? That's only a handful of times a year, and even at $20/gallon would not matter much.
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2022 civic has a 12.4 gal tank
I typically don't wait until it's empty :P
Re:sure. (Score:4, Informative)
In 2007 at the tail end of the Bush administration the average price of gas in the entire country was actually slightly more than it is now.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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Don't forget that in California in 2009, the gas tax was approximately 18 cents per gallon. In 2022, the gas tax is now 51 cents per gallon. Not all of the price increase from 2009 to now is attributable to the rise in crude oil prices.
California Department of Tax and Fee Administration [ca.gov]
Just like Massachusetts roads (Score:1, Interesting)
A freshly resurfaced roadway means it's time to dig it up and replace something underneath.
Similarly, petrochemical energy independence means it's time to run the oil and gas companies out of business by extrajudicial pressure campaigns so we can go back to being more poor and more dependent on dictatorships on the other side of the planet.
The principal cause is attitude. If the attitude is that America is a generally benign entity whose inhabitants should be left free to pursue their own destinies, you get
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> Similarly, petrochemical energy independence means it's time to run the oil and gas companies out of business by extrajudicial pressure campaigns so we can go back to being more poor and more dependent on dictatorships on the other side of the planet.
What? Dictatorships on the other side of the planet control wind, solar, water, and Canada/Australia's massive uranium deposits? Have you been watching too many Bond films and got them confused for reality or something?
Given fossil fuel reserves are finite
Peak Oil (Score:5, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Figure 1: What we propagandized to you for decades and hoped to influence public policy with.
Figure 2: How pants-shittingly wrong we were.
It's Called Irony (Score:2)
Instead of relying on my memory again, I dug deeper just now and it turns out the second chart was added almost exactly ten years ago for the purpose of "showing similarity of US oil production to a Hubbert curve":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
You do realize the reason we didn't hit peak oil (Score:2)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Looks impressively accurate to me, except that he couldn't predict the 2008 financial crisis and dysfunctional energy market driving people back to fossil fuels. I guess he over-estimated our ability to make progress.
*WAS* Energy Independent. (Score:1, Insightful)
Not really. (Score:4, Informative)
The pipeline you speak of was importing fuel to the US. This doesn't make us more dependent on external sources but precisely the opposite. Also, nobody likes an environmental catastrophe, so shutting it down as the right move.
I don't think there should be any production restrictions so long as the company is willing to pay for amount of money needed to clean up the pollution it emits.
It's far past time for companies to invest in renewable energy. Seriously, their refusal to do so is a testament to their own greed because they know they will lose their monopoly of energy if it's just generated using silicon panels that can be produced anywhere on the planet. Losing their monopoly means they have to actually compete with other energy suppliers.
It's far past time for a carbon tax.
Was (Score:3)
I think the word the article ment to use is was. These numbers are from 2020, we have had a lot of turmoil in 2021
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These numbers are from 2020, we have had a lot of turmoil in 2021
Turmoil in 2021? Is that the next Politically Correct version of "Fuck Joe Biden?"
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No matter what coal is dead (Score:4, Insightful)
The US is not even close to energy independent (Score:1)
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However, the US exports nearly 9 million barrels of oil per day, and thus must import a similar amount.
For what purpose?
Re: The US is not even close to energy independent (Score:4, Informative)
Jones Act created water shipping restrictions such that it is effectively compelled to move over-supply in some USA areas to other countries, instead of to another USA port.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/we... [cornell.edu]
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That doesn't invalidate the point of the article, which is that if the price of energy goes up, the extra money paid to import energy is then offset by the extra revenue from exported energy. To the government this is energy independence, since GDP is now more independent of oil price.
According to the TFA, the point is:
For decades, politicians have talked about the U.S. achieving energy independence, a seemingly elusive goal of producing enough fuels to avoid relying on the rest of the world to fill up gas tanks and keep electricity flowing.
However, the US still relies on the rest of the world to fill up gas tanks because it still imports nearly 9 million barrels of oil per day.
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However, the US still relies on the rest of the world to fill up gas tanks because it still imports nearly 9 million barrels of oil per day.
I don't see how you conclude that when the article you linked to says:
This year marks only the second time the United States has been a net total petroleum exporter in the first half of the year. The United States has been a net exporter of petroleum products alone since 2011.
Now there are obviously some semantic tricks being played by the phrase "energy independence" here, but it also suggests that, if anything, the US tends to import crude oil and exports more refined product, such as gasoline. So in any case there doesn't seem to be much argument that we need to import "to fill up gas tanks."
Re:The US is not even close to energy independent (Score:5, Informative)
This was during President Trump.
Nope. Look at the graph; the inflection point was 2008. That was eight years before Trump.
Truth is, it seems to have been during President...
Bush.
(did you think I was going to say Obama? No, he got elected in 2008, but didn't take office until 2009. If you want to give Obama credit, though, go ahead: eight years of that rise in US production did happen on his watch.)
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8 years of an increase in US Oil Production under Obama is a frustrating matter.
Granted that renewable energy also grew under Obama's watch but it did under Trump's as well.
We still need to ween ourselves from non-renewable sources in the coming years. Regardless of the supply of oil, the damage to the environment is going to make life very difficult and Ben Shapiro will have to sell his coastal home.
They want high prices (Score:1)
It is part of the plan to reduce consumption without regard for the poor who need this energy.
For how long, though? (Score:3)
There's only so much oil and gas in the ground. Without curtailing the use of fossil fuels it's a matter of when, not if, we run out. Last I checked - which was like a decade ago at this point so it deserves revisiting - that time was on the order of a few decades at best.
Also, even if the US doesn't import oil, it's still subject to the global market forces that dictate the price of that oil... meaning we're not really independent in any meaningful way unless some absolutely batshit laws get passed that ban energy imports and exports yet still manage to not trigger retaliatory trade wars or other knock-on economic impacts.
=Smidge=
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Also, even if the US doesn't import oil, it's still subject to the global market forces that dictate the price of that oil... meaning we're not really independent in any meaningful way unless some absolutely batshit laws get passed that ban energy imports and exports yet still manage to not trigger retaliatory trade wars or other knock-on economic impacts.
=Smidge=
Are you old enough to remember when OPEC held our nuts to the fire? They can't just cut production and raise prices to ass fuck us like they did back then.
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Quadrupled the price in 1973. Doubled in 1979 (Score:3)
In 1973 OPEC decided to quadruple the price of oil. In 1979 they doubled it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
These are examples of when they actually carried through on it. More often it was a threat that the west had to cowtow to. Whatever they wanted, the US had to agree to it. Because either go along or we cut off your transportation, heating, etc by cutting off the oil.
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300% is rather higher than 6% (Score:2)
Inflation in 1973 was 6%. that's the reduced purchasing power of the dollar, 6%.
OPEN TRIPLED the price of oil. 300%.
If you want to deduct inflation from that, 294%.
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They can because oil is a commodity and when the world oil prices go up worldwide they will also go up in the USA unless the USA bans exports.
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Fuck off racist.
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So you are, in fact, still beating your wife?
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There's only so much oil and gas in the ground. Without curtailing the use of fossil fuels it's a matter of when, not if, we run out.
Nope. That's a fallacy from the peak oil discussions of the 80s. The reality is we will never run out of fossil fuels because the market is price sensitive. Proven reserves are based on the cost of extracting those reserves, so when the product cost goes up there are more reserves which we can tap into.
We will ween ourselves off fossil fuels due to the *price* long before we need to worry about them actually running out.
We are low-hanging fruit pickers. There's plenty of fruit in the tree but none of us are
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> The reality is we will never run out of fossil fuels because the market is price sensitive.
Uh. Even if I grant you this - and I don't - that doesn't really mean that we can't or won't ever run out of oil, it doesn't change the fact that there is a limited supply, and it doesn't discredit the idea of peak oil at all.
The planet is physically finite. Therefore, the amount of fossil fuels present is physically finite. QED.
And to address your bullshit point about prices getting so high that we'll stop using
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Uh. Even if I grant you this - and I don't - that doesn't really mean that we can't or won't ever run out of oil, it doesn't change the fact that there is a limited supply, and it doesn't discredit the idea of peak oil at all.
No it does. The idea has been thoroughly discredited, by researchers as well as the oil industry itself (who were instrumental in calling the alarm). It's a basic economic supply and demand game showing that there will never be a peak supply, but there *will* be a peak demand.
You can see that in historical data already. When oil prices spiked sharply demand reduced and the proven reserves suddenly massively increased as non-conventional oil as well as difficult to reach sources (deep water / arctic) suddenl
Whats missing here (Score:1)
I hate how they call it "Energy" (Score:1)
I hate how the oil industry has some how branded itself as the "energy sector" when "pollution sector" is more accurate, where "energy" has a less critical tone to it.
Nuclear is energy
Wind is energy
Hydro-electric is energy
Solar is energy
Geothermal is energy
Hydrocarbons are also used for energy, but by not calling it what it is, it reduces the reminder of just what it is.
And yes. I'm writing this as I'm about to board a flight which will produce 200kg of CO2 to get home, to drive my car in airport parking, t
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But if we have all the apples we need, the headline should read "America reaches apple independence" not "America reaches fruit independence"
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We could call it a battery, cos it is energy storage. ...maybe dirty battery
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Totally agree. Why on earth wouldn't we use the actual name of the thing? It's just as easy to say that we have reached petroleum independence.
The reason is because even the freakin' news outlets have bought into this greening of the oil business as energy. It's the oil producers own propaganda that the news is regurgitating. This is definitely a pet peeve of mine.
Look, I'm realist, I drive a car that uses gasoline, but fuel economy was a definite consideration when I bought it. And still is when I dec
Money goes where? (Score:2)
??? "It made America poorer, as more of our income went overseas" ???
"It made regular Americans poorer, as more of our income went to the American rich"
FTFY
Is it just me ⦠(Score:2)
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Like carbon offsets (Score:2)
Companies buy carbon offsets so they can say they are "carbon neutral." Yet the same companies continue to produce tons of exhaust, while the offsets are often theoretical or merely promises of future action.
In the same way, the US both imports and exports energy in many forms. These forms are not necessarily interchangeable. If we export more natural gas than we import, and this is offset by imports of oil, you can't just exchange one for the other. If the ports suddenly closed, we would still be in a worl
fta (Score:2)
When is the invasion? (Score:4, Funny)
Pure propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
Before Biden was sworn in, we were actually "energy independent" (by the US Gov's standards, not necessarily "for real") for the first time in decades and we were actually exporting energy, which put downward pressure on the price of oil. It took Biden less than a year to reverse that and he then had to tap the strategic oil reserves and ask the Saudis to pump more oil - we are currently a net importer of oil, including (absurdly enough) from RUSSIA at the very time we have cut our production, thus taking off the downward pressure on prices (so Putin makes more per barrel now than he did a year ago). This stuff's quite complex and we have long both exported AND imported oil in the same years (there are different grades, with different uses and different customers with different needs/capabilities) so what matters here is NOT the number of barrels imported or exported or the specific countries, but rather the net amounts and prices paid.
The "article" pretends to say "under Biden, things are GREAT!" while actually citing stats that show that under Trump we were energy independent and that early in Biden's term we still were, as his policy changes took time to kick-in, but we're not now. it says "The US Is Now Energy Independent" while showing data from two years ago showing that independence, data from last year showing the loss of that independence, and leaving out the current data showing dependence. This sort of dishonesty is NEVER accidental.
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Oh right, let's forget about the COVID lockdowns in 2020 and the crash in demand for fossil fuel that led to this 'independence'.
>This sort of dishonesty is NEVER accidental.
Let's be charitable and call this satire. I couldn't imagine seeing this much hypocrisy and projection on the Internet, no way.
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That said, 2020 was an outlier in far more ways than what was happening in the oil market, and is thus a bad basis for comparisons.
Re: Pure propaganda (Score:2)
Not disputing that the US has made a lot of progress in shale production and was projected to reach sufficiency. But to use 2020 as the baseline to compare against is blatant distortion, probably worse than what the GP is accusing the article of.
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we need to export a lot of this to Europe. (Score:3)
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WHat did I say that would indicate a war mongering ? I would like to see Western Europe not be dependent on a nation that wants to control all of Europe. As such, I suggested that America and Canada needs to step up with selling nat gas. How the fuck is that war mongering? Your service c
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And begged Saudi Arabia to increase oil production.
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As for the release from reserves, that was what it always is. For show. A few day's worth of unrefined crude that had no meaningful impact on supply or prices. It is never, ever anything other than a vain political joke. Usually one performed by a Democrat after their policies cause oil supplies to fall and prices to explode, in the hopes that it will make people forget whose fault it was.
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The whole idea of the pipeline was that the US would get a cut of the revenue from oil that was going to be extracted, refined and whether or not we were involved. While also making the transportation of the oil magnitudes safer, cleaner and more efficient. Stopping it was nothing more than a hideously expensive and wasteful way to buy the vo
If really energy independant (Score:2)
If US really becomes energy independant, maybe it may consider not getting involved as much in the middle east.
That region is already bad enough, without US pocking things there with a sharp stick all the time.
Wait, "now"?? (Score:2)
But it's an election year, oil prices are through the roof, voters are hurting because of it, and it looks like a certain party is going to get shellacked as a result. Coincidence?
Oh yeah? (Score:2)
Then how come Joe Biden <checks notes> screwed up the economy and drove the price of gas up?