Preventing new pipelines from being built == long term effects
Nord Stream == long term effects
Asking OPEC to supply more gas for our current needs == short term effects
Building pipelines is a commitment to consume more fossil fuels in the future. Whereas, increasing production to lower prices in a time of global shortages of every kind, is not that.
Stop trying to equate two completely different things. They're not even in the same ballpark.
The fact that the pipelines are in the future makes them less effective at reducing CO2. You want people to buy hybrids and electric cars right now, not wait until years from now. Lowering the present day price of gas is the worst thing to do.
If people are struggling then cut some of the pork and send more stimulus checks instead. Heck, do a carbon tax and refund all the money -- the average person comes out ahead because some of the tax gets paid by corporations and all the money goes to individuals.
There are more than enough voices within Europe doing that already. The US simply adds to the mix, not in opposition to “Europe.”
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20210119IP...
> Following years of deteriorating relations, MEPs stress the importance of critically reviewing cooperation with Russia in various foreign policy platforms and on projects such as Nord Stream 2. They call on the EU to immediately stop the completion of the controversial pipeline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream
> The Nord Stream 2 pipeline was also opposed by former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, former U.S. President Donald Trump, the European Council President Donald Tusk and British foreign minister Boris Johnson.[179][180] Tusk has said that Nord Stream 2 is not in the EU's interests.
By "he" I presume you're referring to the Biden administration. What "pipelines" have they closed? Biden pulled the permit for the Keystone XL, but that's not so much closing a pipeline as prohibiting a new one from being build (maybe you were including that under the umbrella of "closing"?). The other Keystone pipelines are still operating.
There is also news about possibility closing the Line 5 pipeline, but that hasn't happened and he recently indicated that he had no intention of closing it.
Is there another (or multiple other) pipelines that have been shutdown by the administration? A google search only comes up with the Keystone XL and Line 5 pipelines.
Line 5 is not something Biden closed. How are you counting a pipeline that Biden didn’t close and Biden has no plans to shutdown, as a closure? I don’t understand how you get to 2 closures.
Line 5 is very much still possible to be shut down due to the democratic party's goal of creating a false energy shortage. Whitmer keeps complaining about it and I'm sure that harris and pelosi will tell biden to cancel it and he'll just go "okay".
joebiden.info
I guess they hate energy too...
An increase in supply would mean more oil available at every price. That can only happen by getting it out of the ground, transporting it to refineries, distributing the resulting product to gas stations etc.
Higher prices in the face of increasing inflation may just maintain the incentives for producers in non-OPEC countries. Releasing reserves, to the extent that it can have an effect, will tend to counteract that incentive.
If this is due to sinister plans of OPEC governments, one must realize that it is certainly within their capacity to wait for the temporary increase in quantity available to dissipate.
Current total U.S. reserves[1] are 605 million barrels. Of which 253 million barrels are sweet.
> In 2020, the United States consumed an average of about 18.19 million barrels of petroleum per day, or a total of about 6.66 billion barrels of petroleum. This was the lowest level of annual consumption since 1995.[2]
According to this[3],
>> Sweet crude oil contains small amounts of hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide and it is commonly used for processing into gasoline, kerosene, and high-quality diesel. Before sour crude oil can be refined into gasoline, impurities need to be removed, therefore increasing the cost of processing.
Therefore, it doesn't sound like releasing the sour variety would do much to reduce gas prices.
Putting these facts together, if the U.S. depleted all its sweet reserves in this folly, it would cover about two weeks of consumption.
[1]: https://www.spr.doe.gov/dir/dir.html
[2]: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=33&t=6
[3]: https://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/glossary/sweet-vs-sou...
> Putting these facts together, if the U.S. depleted all its sweet reserves in this folly, it would cover about two weeks of consumption.
The US doesn't need to deplete or even come close to depleting any reserve or resource to depress prices. The strategic timing of this announcement suggests that depressing prices is the real goal anyways: lots of Americans are going to be driving around for the December holidays, and 10-20% lower gas prices can make a difference.
Regular unleaded average price in NY state: $3.566/gal yesterday, $2.218/gal a year ago for a 61% annual increase[1].
If this temporary blip could cause prices to go down by 10% (during a time where demand for other uses for oil are also going up), then prices would be up only 45% from a year ago.
Assuming Biden is releasing the sweet variety that can be readily used to make gasoline, this first step is going to deplete about 20% of the SPR.
How many of those shots does he have?
People who think they can command and control the economy, regardless of the ideological banner they choose for themselves, have caused more misery, poverty, death, and destruction than anyone else. True to form, he is continuing with that.
For NY, this page[2] has figures going back a decade. These are nominal prices. Still, whether inflation adjusted or not, last year was an anomaly. Last October, prices were down 20% from the previous year in line with the depressed economy.
So, if you compare October 2021 with October 2019, nominal gas prices are 30% higher and real prices are 20% higher. On the other hand, in October 2012, gas prices were 43% higher in real terms, so there is that.
Except, in this case, consumers are facing a widespread sustained increase in all prices. 50 cents more for a latte may not mean much to a single person, but 100% increase in the price of fresh produce and almost 80% increase in the prices of meat & poultry have significant effects for a lot of families. And these are the predictable effects we are seeing. It is only going to get worse from here. In terms of historical reference, we are in the mid-60s. We have a long ways to go before we reach the mid-90s.
[1]: https://gasprices.aaa.com/?state=NY
[2]: https://www.nyserda.ny.gov/researchers-and-policymakers/ener...
The intent is not to “increase the long term supply curve”, it is to increase short-run supply and mitigate short-term pricing pressure on fuel, and therefore transportation, and therefore all goods and services that are either transported or require the transportation of other people or goods in their supply chain, which is, approximately, everything.
It is an immediate-term effort to prevent additional inflationary pressure from fuel prices. There’s other venues for intermediate and, if necessary, long-term measures to control general inflation.
> President Biden announced Tuesday that his administration was releasing 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help combat rising gas prices — hours before millions of Americans are expected to hit the road for Thanksgiving.
[1]: https://nypost.com/2021/11/23/biden-approves-release-of-50m-...
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/22/joe-biden-in...
BBB is a big win for Biden and it could help him and dems in 2022 and 2024.
You don’t come back from that.
I strongly support this idea because the fallout will be so swift and severe that it will teach a generation of people to never do such things again.
You stop landlords from collecting rent, set that precedent, and over the next few years they're going to convert rental properties into condos until rents are high enough to account for the risk of it happening again. Then anyone who can't afford to buy is paying higher rent for a generation or more. But it doesn't happen instantaneously and it's hard to trace directly to the act, so people don't understand.
Set price controls on gas and there immediately won't be gas to buy. That's something everybody is promptly going to notice.
It almost feels inevitable to be honest. Am I wrong?
You can convince someone to surrender to you out of spite for their own country, long before you have to point a gun at them nowadays.
What could be more effective for your enemy than taking out all your power stations and plunging your country into total darkness and chaos? Everything would run out in short order and people would turn on each other.
Saves having to mess the place up with bombs and you have plausible deniability within the international community.
There are and will still be many localised conflicts, even some which might impact lots of people ( e.g. if the US does end up attacking Iran, it will be a bloodbath with consequences through Europe, Asia and Africa at the very least). Ukraine-Russia, and everyone around ( Belarus, Baltics, Poland) will probably turn out to be an even nastier affair. Israel's apartheid will probably also result in another war.
But a global war is highly unlikely, at least until climate change and other ongoing environmental disasters wipe out too much resources and people ( e.g. poor communities relying on fishing for sustenance being decimated by dropping fish populations and/or deforestation draining major rivers and lakes).
I would also counter that the response to alleged climate change could also spark conflicts which could lead to more encompassing war for example some greenie gets elected to power in Russia and decimates their ability to export energy (similar to current U.S. situation). That would leave many angry people in the cold in the E.U. and lead to unrest and potentially war. That's kind of out there but still within the realm.
2) People keep repeating this weak-on-China meme but Biden seems a lot more hawkish on them than people seem to be giving him credit for
We’ll see on China. Proof is in action not talk.
I'm sure you're a very nice and competent person, but that's a quote for the ages.
Of course, our failure to predict the afghani military's collapse is a huge error but that just proves that even world's best and most well-funded intelligence agency is not foolproof.
It was obvious to people who had any inkling of Afghanistan.
First, the US created an Afghani army that was dependent on US weapons and logistics, but stopped helping to maintain it even before the withdrawal was done. What does one expect to happen to an airforce when one stops maintance?
Second, every intelligence estimate predicted the Taliban would eventually win post-withdrawal (since they still got a state to support them), and the Afghanis knew about those estimates. Why should a sane Afghani keep fighting, when they could switch sides and live? To make Biden look better?
Ultimately, there was a political decision to leave Afghanistan, and the intel was adjusted to the decision rather than the other way around.
Which state would that be?
Many folks went bankrupt and US turned from a net Oil exporter to an Oil importer. The Biden administration recently started to reverse their policies in the last few months as oil prices surged. (There was also a court case loss on the federal drilling auction ban)
OPEC merrily took advantage of the state of affairs since high oil prices are good for them. Unfortunately, it will take some time for domestic supply to climb again. To tide over the state of affairs, it makes sense to open the strategic reserve. The Trump administration added 77 million barrels to the strategic reserve when the US was having an oil glut anyways, so its not as if the US doesn't have a safe buffer.
In March of 2020 it went from 634,967,000 to a peak of 656,147,000 in July of 2020, to then fall back.
Unless I did my math incorrectly, where can we find the information about the 77M?
You are right that it wasn't 77M barrels in 2020 - my bad. I didn't realise that Democrats had blocked funding for that proposed initiative of SPR increase. The Trump administration worked around this by reducing this to ~30 million barrels and awarding storage contracts. This appears to match your figures.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-25/trump-s-t...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-25/funding-t...
Not that it matters - any administration that lets the economy crash will not stay in power. They will be kicked out .
No, none of the things you mentioned would occur if inequality were addressed and the newly scaled-down economy were appropriately retargeted to meet peoples’ basic needs first and foremost.
It’s called degrowth.
Or are you one of those who believe that economic laws will somehow override physical laws? Because physical limits exist, and we are hitting them.
Take for example North Korea (among the most advanced places in the world right now, in terms of comprehensive de-growth policies): with their ~540 kWh electricity consumption and just .71t CO2 per capita emission (compared to USA: 11.8 MWh and 15.12t CO2), they are experts in the field of de-growth that all other modern societies should endeavor to emulate.
Addressing inequality is similarly important for halting the rise of political authoritarianism (as it grows in reaction to the former), which is an obstacle to all these changes.