Saturday, September 14, 2024

Spot The Contradiction!

Instead of a disciplined focus on one or two themes — such as the Biden era’s record-high gasoline prices and Harris’ flip-flop on banning fracking — Trump has spent weeks rollicking from message to message on energy, false and otherwise. Those include exaggerating his own efforts to block construction of a Russian natural gas pipeline in Europe, as well as offering what analysts call a massively inflated claim about how much his policies could have boosted the United States’ already world-leading oil production. 

Within that one paragraph.

I will remind you: That one came after news OPEC was struggling to maintain the price of oil on the world market BECAUSE the US is the MOST PRODUCTIVE COUNTRY IN THE WORLD OIL MARKET and is STILL setting the price.

 But Politico talked to this "expert":

An oil industry lawyer agreed, saying Trump’s discussion of energy was “meme level.”

“A more coherent and disciplined messenger would have easy pickings on showing that the Biden administration has consistently been hostile to protecting — let alone promoting — domestic oil and gas production,” said the person, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Although they also note this, much further down:

There is no way the United States, already the world’s largest oil producer, could quadruple its output, said Jason Bordoff, a former Obama administration adviser and founding director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. Production that large would exceed OPEC’s.

“The U.S. tripled oil production over the last decade and a half, and today produces more than 20 percent of world supply,” Bordoff said in an email. “There is no scenario where oil production in the US could have grown so much faster over that period that output today would be quadruple its current level.”

That level of production, if even possible, would be enough to feed half the world’s oil demand and crash the market. The last time something like that happened — when Saudi Arabia and Russia in early 2020 boosted their oil output in a market war — oil prices crashed so hard that Trump asked Saudi Arabia and Russia to tighten their spigots to protect American oil companies from going bankrupt.
Market, baby, market.  (What Politico doesn't note, but shouldm is that Biden took control of the market for the US, which is why we control the world price now.)

And, to their credit, Politico closes with this:

Trump was off by a factor of at least 20 when he told Fox News after the debate that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is “the biggest oil site in the world.” The Biden administration closed off that area to drilling in 2023, reversing Trump’s earlier decision to open it.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that ANWR contains between 4 billion and nearly 12 billion barrels of oil that could be pumped out of the ground. That’s not even close to Saudi Arabia’s reported 267 billion barrels of deliverable oil, let alone Venezuela’s 303 billion barrels.

Even after the Trump administration opened ANWR up for oil drillers, a January 2021 lease sale there flopped as few companies thought drilling in the remote wilderness was worth the money or reputational risk.

"Drill, baby, drill" has to mean government takeover of oil production, or it means nothing.  The market determines where drilling occurs, not just access to government protected lands. 

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