serow said; "Oil is sold on a global market to the highest bidder...
Oil produced in the US is on that same market..."

yes yes yes!!!!!  You had a breakthrough in understanding!.  God I feel good when I can get someone to realize something like this.

If we start using all our own resources, we'll dump all that oil on the global market and the price per barrel will be maybe $40 in several years.  The ragheads will have most of their funding eeeee-friggin-liminated!!!  Yay!!

We'll be energy independent, and the military can come home.  (mostly)

It'll hit the oil companies here hard, but somehow I suspect they will find a way to survive.

I've heard more than one expert mention that a lot of the price of oil has nothing to do with fundamentals,... it's  just a form of hysteria.  That said, if our entire government and all the oil companies appear to the rest of the world like we have started a concerted long-term effort to become energy independent by using all our own oil, the cost of a barrel will spike initially because everyone will want to bank some oil at current prices, but soon it'll plummet, because looking ahead all they will see is lower and lower prices for oil as more and more becomes available.

Bringing in to play all our own energy resources (which are MASSIVE) is the single greatest thing we can to do increase jobs, boost the economy, bring the troops home, hack away at the debt, and combat terrorism.

Ive worked in the oilfields. Ive been on the rigs drilling the wells, I worked for The Western Company, as a mechanic ( Western = Halliburton/same as Burger King = Whataburger) & Ive plugged & abandoned wells. YOu wanna see Odessa come to a halt? If Odessa slides to a stop, so does oilfield activity all across the nation. When a barrel of oil drops, so does oilfield activity. IDK what the minimum price for oil can be & still see exploration & development. Lindsey Williams says there is more oil in Alaska than the middle east,,or maybe Saudi Arabia? Energy Non Crisis is the book,,
Heck,, dont worry about it anyway,, We are so screwed now, it doesnt really matter, Obamney, Rombama, doesnt matter which one we get, spending, wars, ridiculous laws that will hurt our economy more & more,, the direction will not change & if someone has info that would allow me to see things are getting better, I wish theyd show it to me,, cuz Im pretty convinced we are about 3/4 to 1/2 of a turn in the toilet bowl from hearing that last Gurgle as the turd disappears from view.


Interesting graph,,

http://headwaterseconomics.org/wphw/wp-content/uploads/RigCounts.pdf

Id stick it in here,, but I cant

Serowbot wrote on 07/26/12 at 19:13:34:


I'm not disappointed at all.  I'm gratified.  You are wrong, though, about the U.S. needing energy independence.  

We desperately need to be free of being held hostage by the ragheads.   We desperately need the economic boost.

Yes, it will cause some changes in the world situations of buying and selling oil, but there is no way we can do it fast enough to cause an outright crash.  If we were ever able to develop the national will to do something like this, it would take a decade or two for the transition.  Not a crashworthy timeframe.

Even if it did cause a crash, so what?  We'd have a temporary set of downturns here and there. We'd recover.  It wouldn't be anywhere near as bad as what the RIB has been doing to us for the past 3.5 years.

After WWII we made a deal with foreign nations. We wouldnt produce our oil fields fully & be independent, they would buy our T-Bills, we would buy their oil.
Part of the agreement that ended the war gave Us the Preferred Currency( I cant think of the Official word now) so that all oil would be bought & sold in dollars, even between nations that didnt use them in any other place. Imagine the boost that gave us!

The oil industry is a racket. The government should nationalize the industry or regulate the sh1t out of it to stop this price fixing and consumer gouging they love to stick us with.

LostArtist wrote on 07/29/12 at 11:26:02:




The Big Dogs even bought up the little guys & closed them down,
But then, I remember when antifreeze was Cheap,, sadly, one of the big manufacturers Burned Down,, & Ohh GEEE,, they didnt rebuild,, & the price went sky high,,

Rowboat, There are more Paper barrels of oil traded every day than real barrels,