Timothy Birdnow

I was worried about this.

Because most American oil has to be obtained through fracking it is naturally more expensive. Add high shipping costs and it becomes too expensive.

And we struggle to refine it anyway, what with just a handful of refineries left in America after 12 years of Obaama and Biden and eight of George W. Bush, an oil man who promoted "renewable energy" (which flies in the face of the common lie told by the global warming nuts that "big oil" funds "deniarism" when in fact a big oil man pushed alternative energy into the forefront and cost us dearly.)

But what will happen when oil stops flowing out of the Gulf completely? They will have to turn back to us.

I had a big argument with a liberal about Trump's first term and how he tried to shore up oil prices. This clown made the usual liberal points about plutocracy and Big Oil and I pointed out at the time this was when oil was very cheap and Mr. Trump needed to shore up prices to a degree so American oil would be competitive on the world market. As far as I know Mr. Trump has never been invested in any real capacity in oil but he is businessman enough to understand we couldn't let oil sink to low or our entire industry would crash, and then when prices went back up we'd have nothing to fall back on; we'd be at the mercy of the Arabs or Venezuela and that would be that.

While our oil companies are doing fairly well now with prices high we are losing our export market, and that isn't a good thing.

But if it hurts us it will hurt the Chicoms or other Asian markets worse.

The big issue here is that we need our oil companies investing in drilling, in exploration, and in refineries. They are doing that right now. If they get too broke they will stop and play a waiting game, selling oil purchased from elsewhwere.

Anyway it's an issue. Hopefully we can get the costs of shipping down to a dull roar. As regular readers know, it's in large part an insurance problem; American companies now insure the tankers rather than the British but they are charging more because it is a more dangerous thing to ship oil these days. That has driven the prices up.

That needs to change. But it will in time - if the GOP holds Congress. If not all bets are off.

Posted by: Mike at October 11, 2026 09:31 PM (r7WVt)

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