https://en.macromicro.me/charts/41674/us-strategic-petroleum...
Highcharts.charts.forEach(chart => { if (chart) chart.yAxis.forEach(axis => axis.update({ min: 0 })); });Having the AI summarize the pros and cons of that action has valid points on both sides. But in his defense, that particular war was not of our doing, unlike the current war with Iran which was initiated impulsively.
It's mind boggling how stupid it all is.
Well... arguably it is partially our doing. Not for the reason's Tucker Carlson & Russia say, but that Obama and later Biden totally sat on their laurels after the Crimean invasion, totally paralyzed by fear of escalation and political fallout.
https://www.oilmonster.com/article/more-productive-wells-spu...
Insofar as I can tell what's really reflected here is a difference between Democrat and Republican policy positions. The Democrats want to minimize domestic environmental impact and be a net oil importer. Let someone else handle the dirty work of drilling. The Republicans are less concerned with the environmental impact and want to increase exports, oil jobs and economic sovereignty. With higher domestic production and less dependence on foreign states, such a large petroleum reserve is unnecessary.
I prefer the Republican position. It sucks to harm the environment. But it sucks more to enable some of the regimes we import oil from. They frequently are not close allies. We frequently end up immersing ourself in wars and other entanglements over this foreign oil. You want to stop the wars, you have to stop the dependence on imported oil. (To be clear I'm not arguing that Republicans will start less wars, or are a more moral party. I am arguing in favor of domestic oil production because it removes a justification for war.)
The Democratic position exports the moral hazard to a place where Americans don't see it. Takes it out of their backyard. But frankly that is an immoral approach which both parties have taken repeatedly and it has undermined the health of the nation. The other case where this takes place at an absolutely massive scale is exporting certain types of jobs to other countries where labor standards are lax, and where slave labor takes place. People out there killed themselves while making iPhone or your shoes because the working conditions in those countries were so horrible. I am willing to pay a little more for shoes and buy a little bit fewer luxury goods so that I don't enable slave labor. Move the jobs back onshore where we can regulate the well being of the workers. We can't control it if it's in another country.
The democrat position is more of, move off of oil to electrification, such that despite no expansion we never have to import, while simultaneously reducing that domestic impact.
Let's also not pretend that current Republican administration's insane military campaign to disrupt oil supply and markets, and how helpful that is to, I don't know, say, Kremlin's oil and gas export revenues, and say, how higher benchmark crude helps to, say, finance a domestic war economy while buffering against sanctions. Just a tiny thought.
China stopped/reduced buying, used their large reserves, EVs and now accelerating EV trucks. And also coal to liquids.
Eventually, China may have to start buying and thats when the fun begins.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/17/business/energy-environme...
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Coal/Chinas-Renewable-Boom-Masks...
China is now the world’s great oil power. Forget OPEC. The Chinese Communist Party calls the shots. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49238158
All reports about the initiation of the war was that Bibi wanted it and manipulated Trump to join in (against the advice of all of those around him warning that the very problem we have now would in fact occur).
Oil companies are not super keen on investing and increasing supply, it will destroy profits.
Turning Oil Into Salt: Energy Independence Through Fuel Choice: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/6963043-turning-oil-i...
It's pretty difficult to figure out what the reality is besides "not good".
> On March 1, 2022, Secretary Granholm announced that the U.S. and its partners in the International Energy Agency (IEA) would release a total of 60 million barrels of oil onto the world market. [snip] In total, DOE released 180 million barrels of crude oil into the market.
https://www.energy.gov/hgeo/opr/history-spr-releases (look at 2022 IEA Coordinate Release)
This, naturally, resulted in higher oil prices, which the Republican party blamed Biden for.
They truly have no shame.
In 2015 the SDR was authorized to sell $2 billion worth of oil during FY2017–2020 and use the proceeds for infrastructure upgrades and life-extension work at the reserve's aging storage facilities.
There were also sales between 5 and 10M barrels a year to fund the "21st Century Cures Act" (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/11/25/5031763...)
The background to this was the increased domestic oil production which made the SDA seem less necessary.
It is because of world wide adoption of EVs that the fossil fuel demand has reduced and stabilized gas prices in the US.
See : https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/batteries-have-unlo...
I get the Iran war part (though the bigger issue there is middle distillerates rather then crude atm), but people were screaming about the SPR drawdown, and lack of buying for 4 years before Trump ever got back into office; and it fell completely on deaf ears.
Why???
The cost of putting unsophisticated grifters in the ultimate position of power.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(Green New Deal via incompetence)
Personally i think trump does not have a plan, but if you tried to sanewash it, i think that is the best rationale i've been able to find.
Everything is hyperbolized, but everything is also true. The Iran war is going horrifically and will likely destabilize oil prices for the foreseeable future. If nothing changes, it'd be catastrophic, but it will change. If necessary OPEC or Russia can be offered sweet deals to stabilize availability, the US could simply sign a favorable (for Iran) deal while waving a white flag emblazoned with "Mission Successful - Nukes Destroyed!" And so on.
So gas prices will not skyrocket, but they will also not stabilize. The current US administration will likely do poorly in the midterms, but that will probably change much less than might be expected. The political establishment loves war, and a war that's going badly puts them in a favorable position for a follow-up victory in 2028, which will otherwise be much closer to a typical coinflip. Even with the Iran War still ongoing, it'd probably be a coinflip. Yay for polarization.
However we dont know what the future holds. All sorts of factors affect what is going to happen. Will china continue to import less? Will the houthis be able to stop Saudi exports long term or is it just a short term issue? Will USA be able to guard ships passing through the strait? Will Iran face some sort of internal collapse? Will USA pack up and go home? Will other countries be drawn into this war?
Nobody can tell you what is really "going on" because nobody knows what the future holds and uncertainty is high.
I don't know a ton about business. But what I realize is companies should not be tied to their methods of their business. An oil company should be an energy company. A car company should be a transit company.
Tied to the discussion about DHH and Rails this week: I can kind of respect DHH saying implicitly "The days of Rails are waning due to LLMs". He's not attached to a framework, he's attached to an idea of people building apps easily.
Is it tied to the cash register? Will the pumps run out of digits too? Will they still be able to sell gas?
One thing I can say: My F150 won’t care. It runs off solar.
Fun fact. Oil and gas prices aren't coupled as much as people think they are. I think these days about 50% of the cost is the oil. When oil goes up it's an excuse to raise prices. When oil price goes down nobody lowers gas prices. There's refining costs, distribution costs, taxes, and oh, let's not forget - PROFIT! (about 20%-30%, mostly for the oil companies, not the gas stations that have pretty low margins). Another thing to consider is that the oil refined into the gasoline you're buying at the pump was not bought at today's future contract prices. You can bet your *%# that the refineries are hedging and trying to keep their costs as low as possible while selling to you as high as possible. Their profit skyrockets when oil goes high. This also influences how much reserves and storage are available. The reserves, oil in transit, and other storage all act as buffers. Point is that's not as simple as it seems.
I'm so happy that I drive a Tesla. I haven't been in a gas station in years. Switch to EVs guys!
If you liked Y2K, you're gonna love 2.2f!
That said, Putin's gonna do what Putin's gonna do and it likely wasn't the Crimean invasion that prompted it. It was the promise of waltzing in and just taking it without resistance.
I am not sure its stupid. My conspiracy theory is that Trump works/connected to US oil industry, who took control over Venezuela's oil and now printing record profits since all competition (Hormuz states, Russia) is suffering from infra damage.
Solar solar solar! The US is perfect for solar. Do more solar. And drive EVs.
The nation where people drive these ridiculously huge trucks that guzzle gas like no tomorrow is complaining about gas prices. In Europe gas costs twice as much!
As a bonus, maybe the military will stop wasting gasoline to murder civilians, since we’ve already established they value oil over absolutely everything else, including human life.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/less-300-million-barr...
At first I thought that’s why the graph zeros where it does, but it’s Y axis starts at 200M.
But
> Iran et al are trying to hold out until the election
> [Iran will] throw in the towel as they lack the ability to hold out long term
is something that I don't think even the most thoughtless parts of the administration really think right?
It's obvious that Iran is winning, not close to throwing in the towel. The US is reduced to trying to get the Straights of Hormuz open without paying a toll to Iran, which is a worse position than the US was in at the start of the war.
To be clear, im not predicting an imminent collapse.
However, countries win wars by projecting strength. Sometimes that is true, and sometimes that is bluffing. It is extremely hard to tell which is which from the outside.
We do know that Iran was looking shakey prior to this war, and that this war has taken a significant toll, especially economically.
Will that translate to something? idk. In many ways you would think that if it was going to, it would already have happened.
However i think sometimes westerners have a very america centric perspective. The costs being suffered here are pretty low for america. Price at the pump is slightly higher. America used up some of its interceptors. That is a pretty low cost. Sure american allies are getting pounded, which has long term impacts, but that is not something ordinary americans will feel. On the other hand Iranians are feeling huge costs, and the longer it goes on, the worse their bargaining position gets (e.g. people frak more, pipelines get built etc).
All this to say, i dont know what is going to happen, but the Iranian position is fragile, and gets more fragile with time. Anything could happen.
Again, we don't really know all the facts on the ground, and we don't know what the breaking point is, but this is partly the U.S.'s strategy here. Seems like it is producing results because Iran is open to more negotiation as these past few weeks have passed. Why would they do this if they were walking away unscathed and winning?
On the flip side, though, I do concede that the US people have just not borne the brunt of the disaster yet. When that happens, they snap like a twig, only because they didn't support this war to begin with. Support was at a record low when the war began and continued to drop to this day.
In the end Iran's goal seems more attainable: Make this so painful for the US that they do not dare try this again for a long time if ever.
The US's goal was topple the regime, install their puppet and acquire the nuclear material. Now its just getting back to the JCPOA or something like it. Not good enough for Iran. They want to make sure this stops for good.
“Extend and pretend.” Luckily, we’re almost out of runway, both with oil and the bond market. Natural consequences are required to encourage improved outcomes.
(The war will not end until Iran decides to end it, just as Ukraine can lob drones at Russian refineries and oil terminals forever)
The US is winning on so many fronts these days, it’s getting hard to track. /s
The Republican electorate will not stand for Trump being constrained or criticized by Republicans. That's why there are almost no remaining Republican elected officials who are willing to confront the Trump administration aside from a handful of lame ducks like Tillis and Massie.
Functionally, the Republican congress is unable to hold the Trump administration to account, because Republican voters have ensured that it cannot. The only way Trump will ever be constrained is via Democrats.
https://x.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/727604522156228608
> If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it. —- Lindsey Graham, May 3, 2016
It's not a traditional party in the American sense any more, there's no real policy making behind the scenes, it's basically the Trump family enriching itself and a rabid base enabling it. The institutional part that supposed to be the brain of the whole operation has left the building