We're beyond peak oil. Not peak from lack of available reserves, peak because we need and consume less.
OPEC and other market/supply manipulation, plus collusive behaviour explains pricing more than availability.
Why would anyone exploit thick, heavy, sulphur rich expensive-to-extract oil over light sweet crude? Oh right: Tar sands. Like, this hasn't been a thing for ages.
TL;DR It's politics, its bullshit. Oil is a great feedstock for drugs, fertiliser, plastics and explosives. We don't depend on it for fuel as much as we used to and we will depend on it for fuel much much less in the future.
Venezuela's problems are going to take more than US market manipulation to fix.
(we do obviously both depend on, and need continuance of access to oil, and oil prices affect inflation and industrial production in all kinds of ways. "less" is not none)
SanjayMehta•46m ago
Trump is trying to take control of the global energy market in a desperate attempt to alleviate the effects of the world dumping the dollar.
He thinks he can remain the global hegemon playing such games, will work for a short time but the dollar is done for.
ggm•44m ago
I think like most people in power, he works to satisfy a domestic agenda. If he can use this to leverage a lower pump price, he wins. If he can gain traction with the oil companies in dispute over stranded assets and losses in Venezuela, he wins. It has nothing to do with anyone else, any global need, or intent.
That he can now choke oil entry to Cuba is only an added extra, Rubio in partiular will love that. It's causing extreme economic distress there.
There is no neutral arbiter, no single viewpoint declaring good or bad in these things. States act as they need to the situation they find themselves in. If it sounds amoral it is: there is no dimension of need for this to be decided on morals or even economics. It just advantages the administration right now, here, at this time, and tomorrow it may not but tomorrow is another day.
SanjayMehta•30m ago
He has expressed worry over the BRIC rumoured currency threatening even more tariffs for countries not using the dollar.
Also, regional geopolitics aside, the oil companies are still mad about Iran's oil. The Israelis have been talking up a nuclear threat for decades, hasn't happened yet.
It's always about oil. I have no sympathy for the Iranian regime, but if I was part of that gang, I would be frantically building nukes.
Oil and no nukes is a bad combination.
jiggawatts•18m ago
You're overthinking it.
Trump doesn't play 5D chess or whatever, he doesn't think in terms of grand global strategy. He's got dementia and can't string five words together with going off on a tangent.
The only model you need of Trump's decision making process is this: He's doing what would have been a good idea when he was a young man.
His formative years have etched a set of policies into his brain, and there's no way he'll unlearn decades and decades of out-dated geopolitics in his sunset years.
Oil was critical in the 70s and 80s![1] The US was a net importer, unlike now. That's why he thinks controlling the oil is so important. That's all. No other reason.
That's why industry heads are all looking at each with raised eyebrows and silently mouthing "What the f%#$? Why would we invest in that!?"
Similarly with tariffs: They might have made sense decades ago, before the USA become so deeply entwined in global production chains, before all manufactured goods got complicated.
Ditto with coal. It was the cheapest and best source of energy... in the 80s.
[1] There were oil crises in 1973 and 1979, and imports peaked in 1980 when Trump was in his 40s.
ggm•1h ago
OPEC and other market/supply manipulation, plus collusive behaviour explains pricing more than availability.
Why would anyone exploit thick, heavy, sulphur rich expensive-to-extract oil over light sweet crude? Oh right: Tar sands. Like, this hasn't been a thing for ages.
TL;DR It's politics, its bullshit. Oil is a great feedstock for drugs, fertiliser, plastics and explosives. We don't depend on it for fuel as much as we used to and we will depend on it for fuel much much less in the future.
Venezuela's problems are going to take more than US market manipulation to fix.
(we do obviously both depend on, and need continuance of access to oil, and oil prices affect inflation and industrial production in all kinds of ways. "less" is not none)
SanjayMehta•46m ago
He thinks he can remain the global hegemon playing such games, will work for a short time but the dollar is done for.
ggm•44m ago
That he can now choke oil entry to Cuba is only an added extra, Rubio in partiular will love that. It's causing extreme economic distress there.
There is no neutral arbiter, no single viewpoint declaring good or bad in these things. States act as they need to the situation they find themselves in. If it sounds amoral it is: there is no dimension of need for this to be decided on morals or even economics. It just advantages the administration right now, here, at this time, and tomorrow it may not but tomorrow is another day.
SanjayMehta•30m ago
Also, regional geopolitics aside, the oil companies are still mad about Iran's oil. The Israelis have been talking up a nuclear threat for decades, hasn't happened yet.
It's always about oil. I have no sympathy for the Iranian regime, but if I was part of that gang, I would be frantically building nukes.
Oil and no nukes is a bad combination.
jiggawatts•18m ago
Trump doesn't play 5D chess or whatever, he doesn't think in terms of grand global strategy. He's got dementia and can't string five words together with going off on a tangent.
The only model you need of Trump's decision making process is this: He's doing what would have been a good idea when he was a young man.
His formative years have etched a set of policies into his brain, and there's no way he'll unlearn decades and decades of out-dated geopolitics in his sunset years.
Oil was critical in the 70s and 80s![1] The US was a net importer, unlike now. That's why he thinks controlling the oil is so important. That's all. No other reason.
That's why industry heads are all looking at each with raised eyebrows and silently mouthing "What the f%#$? Why would we invest in that!?"
Similarly with tariffs: They might have made sense decades ago, before the USA become so deeply entwined in global production chains, before all manufactured goods got complicated.
Ditto with coal. It was the cheapest and best source of energy... in the 80s.
[1] There were oil crises in 1973 and 1979, and imports peaked in 1980 when Trump was in his 40s.