"A 2 million barrel-carrying supertanker arrived for the first time at a jetty in Texas City as surging U.S. oil output drives up incentives to export."
Sumthin' this dumb old guy doesn't get.
What happened to the laws of supply and demand?
In the past weeks, crude oil prices, along with the price of gasoline at the pump, have been jumping up.
If we have "so much crude" that we can export it, why not keep it here so that the excess supply would put a downward pressure on domestic prices?
Unlike the other "more educated" folks of this forum, it's clear to me that the lower oil prices are, the better it is for the overall economy.
Better at the manufacturing level.
Better for the "transportation sectors".
Better for the retailers.
Better for the consumer.
The ONLY folks who this probably isn't "better" for are those who make their money within the oil industry. I can see why THEY would complain. I post this expecting such efforts to "correct my thinking" on the matter (but it ain't gonna be "corrected", so don't waste too much breath).
I agree with Mr. Trump, who has said that the price of oil was being kept artificially high.
It's time to knock it down a bit.
I also believe that we should husband our resources for generations to come. That means that what we produce here... should be used here.
We mostly export the expensive lighter sweeter oil and import cheaper heavier sour oil. We tend to have the most advanced refineries in this part of the world and are more able to efficiently process that cheaper oil.
Prices are going up because the surplus stocks have been coming down, both in the US and the rest of the world. Demand has risen faster than production has risen lately.
The reason the US is one of the most productive oil producers relative to our oil reserves is the private ownership of those reserves, compared to government ownership in most of the world. The ability for the individuals to invest, risk their own capital and profit from it if successful has driven us to be the world's leader in innovation in the oil and gas fields.
Trust me, you have benefited from that significantly. They have driven the economy farther, provided high paying jobs and lots of taxes to this country. Manufactures making pipe, valves, pumps, motors, switchgear, motor controls, instruments, etc have greatly benefited from the US boom.
That boom, shale field production, happened because prices got high enough to justify investment in those expensive fields. It cost far more per barrel to produce oil from a shale field that from the historic fields of the middle east and other "traditional" sources.
We still import significantly more than we export. But today, because of past and current pricing, we mostly export refined products. We actually import more than we need because we have a refinery surplus. So we import crude and export a finished product of transportation fuel. That is more jobs in the US, better trade balance.
