U.S. ''Oil Weapon'' Could Change Geopolitics Forever

[FBaggins]

In a dynamic that shows just how far U.S. oil production has come in recent years, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Monday that in the last two months of 2018, the U.S. Gulf Coast exported more crude oil than it imported.

Monthly net trade of crude oil in the Gulf Coast region (the difference between gross exports and gross imports) fell from a high in early 2007 of 6.6 million b/d of net imports to 0.4 million b/d of net exports in December 2018. As gross exports of crude oil from the Gulf Coast hit a record 2.3 million b/d, gross imports of crude oil to the Gulf Coast in December—at slightly less than 2.0 million b/d—were the lowest level since March 1986.

U.S. oil production hit a staggering 12.1 million b/d in February, while that amount has been projected to stay around that production mark in the mid-term then increase in the coming years. The U.S. is the new global oil production leader, followed by Russia and Saudi Arabia, while Saudi Arabia is still the world’s largest oil exporter - a factor that still gives Riyadh considerable leverage, particularly as it works with Russia, and other partners as part of the so-called OPEC+ group of producers. However, Saudi Arabia's decades-long role of market swing producers has now been replaced by this coalition of producers, reducing Riyadh’s power both geopolitically and in global oil markets. In short, what Saudi Arabia could once do on its own, it has to do with several partners.

Meanwhile, U.S. crude oil production, particularly in the Gulf Coast region, is still increasing. In November 2018, U.S. Gulf Coast crude oil production set a new record of 7.7 million b/d, the IEA report added. However, since most of the oil produced in the U.S. is light sweet crude, the U.S. still has to rely on heavier crude blends from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and others since most American refineries are configured to process heavy crude. On the other hand, a surplus of light sweet crude allows the U.S. to export more oil thus giving the country growing energy geopolitical power once enjoyed almost exclusively by Saudi Arabia and Russia. The increasing amount of U.S. crude being exporter, along with the increasing amount of U.S. LNG being imported (with exports of both fuels projected to increase) is changing energy geopolitics.


https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/International/US-Oil-Weapon-Could-Change-Geopolitics-Forever.html

[msongs]

1. crude oil is the new coal nt

[SHRED]

2. And what's hilarious...

...is that many average Americans have it in their heads that it is somehow "our oil".

[FBaggins]

3. It isn't ours?

Please list the various costs of production and where those dollars go... then compare them to the same costs for oil from Saudi Arabia.

[NNadir]

4. The last time the United States used the "oil weapon" was 1941, when F.D. Roosevelt cut off Japan.

The result was Pearl Harbor, and a massive attack on what is today Indonesia.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing positive about producing oil. It is a crime against all future generations, a subject that should be the object of disgust with ourselves.

I wouldn't call hegemony over oil supplies as "forever." Forever is the oil waste indiscriminately dumped into the atmosphere.

[FBaggins]

5. Oh please

War with China... pullout from The League of Nations... alliance with Germany/Italy...

But it was restrictions on oil sales (and not, of course, closing the Panama Canal, ceasing exports of copper and scrap metals, or freezing their assets) that caused them to attack us.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing positive about producing oil

Incorrect. There’s little positive about the consumption of insane amounts of oil. But the local production of oil (as opposed to importing it from the Middle East and spending trillions fighting wars there) is quite positive.

[NNadir]

6. Oh please indeed.

If your moral universe consists of not giving a rat's ass about the 7 million people who die each year from air pollution because the very temporary production of oil was temporarily coming from the mid-east or North America or Russia or wherever,. you can have the opinion that there is nothing wrong with producing oil.

The argument that consumption of oil and not the production of oil is the ethical equivalent of stating that the production of heroin is not a problem either, that it is heroin addicts. This, of course, is a chicken and egg argument.

I would add that personally I find your argument about history as superficial and as weak as your argument about oil.

This may come as a surprise to you, but the United States was not a member of the League of Nations, and mentioning it in this context is rather absurd.

Oil need not be a necessary commodity. Billions of people lead useful lives before the tragedy of the discovery of its usefulness as motor fuel, a little over a century ago.

History, even for those who apparently know very little about it in the current context of the only war which ended as a nuclear war, which started, at least where the United States and Russia was concerned as an oil war, will not forgive those who have a withered primitive view of oil as a good thing.

It would have been better for the future if the whole world ran out of it.

[FBaggins]

7. Lol... Hyperbole much?

If your moral universe consists of not giving a rat's ass about the 7 million people who die each year from air pollution

Laughably obtuse. Commenting that if we're going to consume a fuel it makes more sense to produce it ourselves rather than fight wars for the privilege of buying it from countries in the Middle East in no way means someone doesn't care about air pollution.

Particularly entertaining is how you consolidate all deaths worldwide from air pollution... when the bulk of those deaths occur from indoor air pollution caused by burning biomass/coal for heat and cooking fuel and have not thing one to do with the discussion (other than your later error below) and most of the outdoor air pollution isn't related to oil either (coal/gas electricity generation... natural pollution like dust fires... industrial coal burning... biomass burning for heat). Yet somehow the whole thing gets pinned on me, eh?

Tell you what. When you're done with your time machine and can convince people from centuries past that their lives won't actually be better by shifting to more compact fuels (or fuel at all since even burning wood seems to be out)... you let me know. If there's a way to have a civilization without energy, I'll be happy to join you in opposing energy production.

This may come as a surprise to you, but the United States was not a member of the League of Nations

Who said it was? It was Japan that backed out.

The "absurd" argument is your implication that the US should have done something other than cease supplying an Axis power with the means to fight the war.

Oil need not be a necessary commodity. Billions of people lead useful lives before the tragedy of the discovery of its usefulness as motor fuel, a little over a century ago.

The discovery of oil was around the Civil War and it's use as automotive fuel was about three decades later. It's hard to say that "billions of people led useful lives" before that since the world population had yet to hit multiple billions.

But there's the biggest punch line. Prior to the point of productive uses of oil and natural gas. People were burning coal and wood in stoves and fireplaces in their homes. Which, of course, produced far more indoor air pollution (and related deaths) than what they ended up with by switching to cleaner ways to live.