It hasn’t. It’s still cheap and near cheaper-still oil. Plentifully. All while its economy uses less oil, year after year, to produce one unit of production.
Is it going to get pricier? Sure. But it will get pricier for almost everyone else faster.
2. Just a few hours ago you referenced a link [0] showing that China has electricity prices sitting at half the US's. India too.
The US has lost access to a cheap form of energy and is likely going to be forced to rely on electricity going forward. I put it to you that it is by no means certain that the US market is going to be in a position where it can sustain even relative out-performance, let alone objectively good performance in line with historic figures. Depending on how optimistic we are about the communists continuing to adopt sane policies, it may even be unlikely based on the current trends.
Fortunately those trends will likely change as the squeeze the US is going through right now gets more pronounced. But the conditions we see now are simply not the conditions of the past 60 years, putting strategies based on the last ~150 years of data into a suspect light.
> America hasn’t run out of cheap oil ... all while the economy uses less oil, year after year
So cheap you can't afford to use it? I don't want to be exposed to your version of cheap.
[0] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/China/electricity_prices/
Why would I? Everyone knows this. It’s just not a catastrophe for America.
> few hours ago you referenced a link [0] showing that China has electricity prices sitting at half the US's. India too
How did you misread “China pays more for power than American industry” as China pays less?! Look at the national price for business in China. Now look at our states’ industrial prices. Lots of variation, because e.g. New York has different policy preferences than Texas.
> US has lost access to a cheap form of energy and is likely going to be forced to rely on electricity going forward. I put it to you that it is by no means certain that the US market is going to be in a position where it can sustain even relative out-performance
This is a real argument. Thank you.
I agree it’s uncertain. The point, however, is that this won’t happen to America in a vacuum. And as it happens, it hurts others worse and first. I’d also challenge the assumption that we’re out of cheap energy [1], but that’s a separate discussion. My point is that in a world running out of oil, nobody is better positioned than America, with its domestic reserves, co-located industry and cheap electricity.
> cheap you can't afford to use it
You really can’t think of another reason we won’t use our fossil fuels?
Hint: it’s the same reason Chinese and Indian power prices are anomalously close to America’s.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_sourc...
I don't see individual states.
> You really can’t think of another reason we won’t use our fossil fuels?
The price rockets upwards and people start using less of the stuff. There are a lot of possible explanations beyond that, but it is safe to assume the obvious one that is most likely.
I'm sure you already know about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox but I'll link to it anyway.
> price rockets upwards
Again, where is this happening? I’ve provided numerous data points refuting this faulty hypothesis, yet you keep circling back to it.
Across the West, fossil fuels are being shifted away from for environmental reasons. India and China burn coal. That’s why Indian and Chinese power prices are even in America’s ballpark. Surprisingly, we’re finding some of the new generation methods, e.g. wind but increasingly also solar, to be even cheaper than coal and oil.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update/end-use.php
Then use the national figures. (And China won’t. Oil is cheap in Texas because it’s pumped in Texas. China’s closest analogs are pipeline terminals and seaports. The former is like a single county’s oil production. The latter vulnerable.)
> seem from the other link you posted that average Chinese business has much better access to electricity than the average US one. India too.
America is ridiculously more electrified than either country, so “better access” is the wrong word. I think you mean cheaper?
Short answer, no. New York City adds power tariffs because they don’t want you doing power-intensive crap in the city. If you’re doing energy-intensive work, you go upstate, wheee the tariffs are intentionally cheaper. Will a shop in San Francisco pay more for power than one in Delhi? Sure. But now the energy intensity comes back to bite, because that shop in San Francisco is doing a better job turning that energy into production than the one in Delhi.
How are you getting from that to "China pays more for power than American industry"? Could you do a summary in one place? Your links seems to support the opposite conclusion but maybe you've got something going on across a few comments that I've missed.
I also went to look at the absolute numbers out of interest and China produces 8 PWh total and the US 4 PWh total according to [2] and playing around with the "Electricity production by source" graph. Although obviously that means per-capita the US is still a way ahead.
[0] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/China/electricity_prices/ & https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-price...
[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update/end-use.php
The median American pays more for everything than the median Chinese. Including power. For electricity, particularly for households, the difference is largely taxes.
The median kWh purchased in America, however, is bought for less than it is in China because power-hungry industry happens where it is cheap. This cost difference is partly because China underproduces energy by a third [1]. It’s partly because we make power more cheaply [2]. The first gives us security. The second economic advantage. (It’s also why ditching coal and oil is easier for America than it currently is for China.)
Also, fun fact: electricity is getting cheaper in America, and has been for at least forty years [3]. (Those are household figures. No ready source for industry, but same tale, you can deflate historic prices using the PPI.)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_p...
[2] https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...
[3] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/electricity-...
It is hard to say exactly what that entails. Maybe the world gets lucky with a fission/fusion breakthrough of some sort - maybe even a political breakthrough to let us use proven-good nuclear tech. But in the interim it isn't easy to say that the US stock market will mirror its performance in an era where it had unchallenged dominance of a global network of easily available oil shipments. And it certainly isn't safe to say things will happen slowly. Things could start breaking and move quickly.