JFlorio wrote:
Looks like the greenies backed by the Biden weenies might just get their wish of unaffordable oil products down the road. Be careful what you wish for.
It's not a wish, it's a prediction and it looks like those "greenies" are right. There are several reasons for the current increase in oil prices, including...
1. Instability in the Middle-East.
2. A projected shortfall of oil from Mexico.
3. Continued commitment by OPEC nations to cut production.
4. Projected escalation of demand from China.
None of these factors have anything to do with the US and yet we still pay the price. In fact, we are producing more oil today than we have EVER produced in our entire history. The whole time Biden has been in office our production has been at full-throttle... and yet this is still happening.
What the "greenies" seem to understand that their opponents don't is that the influence of domestic oil production on the global market is limited.
I know Dumbass Donny keeps saying that HE made us "energy independent" during his term but that's actually BS... For ONE quarter, we actually did export more oil than we imported. But that did NOT make us energy independent because we were STILL importing oil!
One might ask… Why were we still importing oil when we had so much oil to export? The simple answer is that almost all of our refineries are designed for heavy crude and most of what we extract today is light sweet crude. So we export light crude to countries that can refine it and we import heavy crude for our own refineries to process. This arrangement makes good business sense for Big Oil but also guarantees our dependency on foreign oil, no matter how much we actually drill.
Something else to consider when evaluating the magical minute when our exports exceeded our imports... The fact that while the rate of increased production remained consistent, it was the rate of demand that varied. Interestingly, Obama's push for conservation coincides with the decline in demand, that eventually dipped below our level of exports while Trump's reversal of such policies coincides with our return to increased demands, which once again pushed our imports back to above the level of our exports.
In any case, none of this makes any difference to the fact that we have been depending on foreign oil since 1974 and no, we can NOT just DRILL our way to energy independence. Either we have to wait for Big Oil to change their business model or we need to INNOVATE our way to energy-independence by finding alternative sources.
JFlorio wrote:
On a side note one group gives Biden a positive approval rating. 82% approval. People earning over $400,000/yr or more. Ah the working man’s president indeed.
It's more typical now for income to be reported per household, rather than per individual. A $400,000 income is described by analysts as "comfortable" for an upper-middle class family of four living in a city. My guess is that these families have members that are educated and smart enough to know that Biden is actually doing a good job.