Obama's failed foreign policyFollow

Pirates, Global warming.

Honestly Varus? The graph doesn't show that at all, unless one is being incredibly selective about how they measure which party is "in power" at any given time. The lowest price period occurred between the mid-80s to around 2000. During that time period, we had both Republican Presidents with Democratic Congresses, and a Democratic President with a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President with a Republican Congress. The two highest periods are in the late 70s and the late 2000s. In one, we had a Dem Congress and Dem president, and in the other we had a GOP president and a Dem congress.

We could try to make the argument that when the Dems control both White House and Congress that gas prices go up, but prices also went up when the GOP controlled those things as well. While the highest point was in 2008 (when Dems controlled congress), it's kinda hard to ignore the general trend leading up that that point.

We could attempt to argue that prices rise when one party controls both the white house and congress and drop when there's divided power, but that's not really supported either (otherwise prices would not have spiked in 2008, then dropped and now spiked again in 2011). The data just don't support making any specific claims about party power in government and gas prices and any attempt to do so is pretty questionable.


A far better argument to make with regard to gas prices and political party policies is to say that we should be increasing our domestic drilling capability in the US, not specifically because of any price effect that may have, but so that when prices do spike we actually will make money instead of sending it into foreign economies. IMO, that's the best argument for increased production capability. And we don't even have to use it all the time. When prices are cheap, there's nothing wrong with buying our oil from foreign sources. But IMO the ability to be able to walk away from a foreign oil producer when we want and say "Nah. We'll just turn on those pumps we've got at home and save ourselves some cash" gives us not only significant economic advantages, but also gives us a bit more foreign policy leverage.

That's the conservative argument with regard to oil and foreign policy.

Except that the oil is sold on the global market unless you're advocating market controls to keep US produced oil within the United States and price control it so it's cheaper than they could sell it for on the global market. And we can't produce enough extra to significantly impact prices on a global scale. And that drilling doesn't make "us" any more money aside from the initial permit costs, etc. It makes the oil companies more money. Given previous threads about oil companies using tax loopholes (which you fully support) and subsidies paid to them (which you also fully support), I fail to see how "we" are making more money. The oil companies will make bank though.

I don't doubt that it is.

Edited, Apr 8th 2011 6:36pm by Jophiel

Whether.

That's not the point at all. It's so that when prices are high, more of the cost of oil consumption generates benefits to US owned businesses instead of simply piling into the pockets of foreign owned businesses. That money will flow into domestic business operations, which pay taxes in the US, and which employ people in the US, who spend that money in the US, thus offsetting to some degree a higher price of oil.



Actually, we can. We don't have to in any particular scenario, but the largest impact on global oil prices is speculation. And that speculation often feeds off instability in the ME (and grossly exaggerates the market effects along the way). Oil prices can rise or fall by 20-30 dollars/barrel just on news of a single nation increasing or decreasing its oil supply by a few hundred million barrels a year (or fears of something happening which might affect said supply). If the US has the ability to do the same, we can be one of those nations with the ability to affect those prices rather than one of the nations who is simply subject to them.



And that doesn't benefit the rest of us? You think oil company profits just go into a coffee can somewhere on some executive's desk?



Your failure in this matter doesn't translate into you being right.

Edited, Apr 11th 2011 2:30pm by gbaji

And it'll still take 6-8 years more to do it if we wait another 6-8 years, wont it? How many years of conservatives saying "let's start drilling now so that we're not bent over the next time oil prices rise" before that argument stops having weight?



If the US chose to act as a supply balance to global oil production, speculation in that market would level out quite a bit. You get that speculation works because people aren't sure of the actual outcome, right? If everyone knows that any oil production drops are going to be countered by increased US supply, then they wont speculate that oil will rise so fast and far, and by not speculating this, the price wont follow their speculation. We could act as a stabilizing effect on oil if we want. Even absent that, being able to ensure that a larger portion of those increased costs end out back in the US economy instead of elsewhere is a good enough reason to do this.

If the choice is between buying that oil from Shell at $140 a barrel or buying it from some foreign oil producer for the same cost, isn't the former better than the latter? Even if our production has absolutely zero impact on global oil prices at all, it's worth doing. Isn't it?



We can't now, because our own oil needs so far outstrip our oil production that we're at or near production maximums already and are unable to take any advantage of changing oil prices.



No one expected that it would. Not today anyway.



I'm not sure what point you're making here. No one is arguing that announcing plans to increase US domestic oil production 8-10 years down the line is going to have an immediate effect on oil prices today (ok, maybe some nutballs are, but no one serious). The argument is that we need to start increasing oil production infrastructure today so that 10 years down the line we're not just as subject to the whims of the oil market as we are today.

I just don't understand at all the argument that there's no sense doing this because it'll take too long to take effect. If we'd increased that oil production infrastructure 10 years ago, wouldn't we have it in place today? It's like arguing that there's no point taking any steps towards the grocery store because it'll take a thousand more to get there and we need groceries right now. Um... That need doesn't change if we don't start walking, right?




Huh? Are you seriously arguing that it doesn't benefit us to produce more of the oil we consume in the US than to buy it from foreign sources? Because that's a bit crazy. If you can't grasp that producing something locally is pretty universally viewed as good for said local economy, then I'm not sure how I can help you to understand this. You'll just have to take my word for it that this is true I guess.




What evidence would suffice? You need someone to tell you that increased domestic oil production would benefit the US economically? Isn't the fact that this is true for any good in any market proof enough? Maybe you should take a basic economics class or something?




Lol! Covering your bases, aren't you? I love it when you do this btw Joph. You predict the obvious response to your ridiculous argument and then declare victory because you predicted it. Wow! That's so clever...

But heres some guy writing a paper on the subject. As predicted, he concludes that areas where oil is produced locally are not negatively impacted when there are sudden oil price spikes (and in some cases actually benefit). That was like 10 seconds of googling Joph. It's not like the concept of "local production of a good benefits local economy if said good increases in cost" is even remotely difficult to understand much less even refuted seriously.


But I'm sure you'll insist that that's not sufficient evidence I guess. I'm sure you'll play the usual game you play of insisting that nothing I say is "proof", while insisting that if I don't provide proof, I must be wrong. At the end of the day, what you are arguing completely flies in the face of some pretty basic economic realities. It's you who need to make the argument that increased production wont benefit the US. I don't think you can do that though, so you fall back on this incredibly lame approach.

Edited, Apr 11th 2011 4:12pm by gbaji

You've completely changed your argument to one about domestic drilling creating jobs. Your initial argument was, and I quote you again...

We're not going to be walking away from any foreign oil producer. How exactly do you propose that we only purchase domestically produced oil?

Your first link fails to address this at all. Your second link has the American Petroleum Institute guy admitting that just drilling for domestic oil won't affect global prices but it'll produce some jobs so yay for that. By the way, lulz at you snidely saying "political appointee!" but then taking an oil industry lobbyist's word as gospel.

If your argument is solely "Paying people to drill holes in the US results in hole drilling jobs", then let me know. But that wasn't what you were arguing. You were saying that we could just walk away from foreign oil producers and "save some cash" by "turning on the pumps at home".

Edited, Apr 11th 2011 7:19pm by Jophiel

Why "get serious about drilling" if no one can explain how this will significantly reduce our dependence upon foreign oil without utilizing strict market controls? We have no effective way to tell Saudi Arabia (for example) to **** off and stop buying their specific oil off the global market while ensuring that we only buy oil from Exxon drilled in the Gulf.

And, even if we could, we have no way to prevent Exxon from charging the same exact $135 a barrel for Gulf oil that the Saudi oil is costing. Try to pay Exxon less and they'll just sell the oil elsewhere for the real going rate. So this pipe dream that we'll "turn on the pumps at home and save ourselves some cash" is just that, a pipe dream.

Can we at least get an honest admission that domestic production isn't going to be some magic unshackling from foreign production?

Edited, Apr 12th 2011 10:34am by Jophiel

That's easy to solve. Just buy up Exxon with US taxpayers money and dictate how they run things.

I daresay Joph has Varus over the proverbial barrel.

Well, I am. You're talking some sort of unicorn daydreams.

You don't know what "flooding" is, do you?

Did you have an answer yet about how we're going to purchase and use US oil off the global market instead of foreign oil?