Trump’s energy policies face setbacks as oil barons resist production boost. “Drill Baby Drill” presupposed that with Trump in power, drillers would shrug off woke snowflake regulations, rip into wild lands and open a floodgate of oil. In reality the industry is not interested in opening the spigots

https://www.ourmidland.com/opinion/voices/article/trump-energy-policies-oil-production-20184172.php

by mafco

41 comments

  1. At the risk of sounding smug: Duh. Anybody with a passing knowledge of how the oil business works knew this was going to happen.

  2. We already knew this. Production already at record levels

  4. It’s almost like Trump had no idea what he was talking about about…..what a twist

  5. Oil has to be a certain price per barrel to make the profits that the oil companies want. Each oil field is different in what price they will pump at. Ten years ago the price in Wyoming was around $70 pbl. Some place like N. Dakota was higher. West Texas was like $35. Basically the shittier the living and weather conditions the higher the price.

  6. Because when the tap’s open, prices will drop…it’s just more greed masquerading as conscientiousness.

  7. It’s like nobody remembers what Trump did to fuck the oil industry his first term.

  8. We already have plenty of oil. Big Oil wants LESS oil available so they can keep prices higher.

  9. opening wells costs money, and is profitable only if prices are high. you lose money to open wells to lower prices. no shit big oil is not interested in

  10. Cheap oil is not a good corporate strategy!

    Perhaps Donald should de privatize the industry, as most of his plans appear like communist multi year plans that usually lead to disaster.

    Edit: forget de in front of privatize

  12. It almost like we been saying same shit for year that drill baby drill is not a fucking thing.

  13. The painful part is that drilling is the smaller and less important part of the US oil industry- refining makes more money, adds more value, returns more of that value to the country, employs more people, and more of those in highly skilled jobs. It’s the real success story of US oil, in recent years. People still love the image of hte roughneck driller, covered in oil, being a manly man but the industry’s value is built on tech.

    And it got that way on imports. Not because imports are cheap (that plays a part, but not for obvious reasons), but because not all oil is the same, and the high tech high capability US refinineries can handle the heaviest, sourest crude in the world, which most refineries can’t. Meanwhile US crude is mostly lighter and sweeter, which in some ways is good but makes refining easier. So to get the value out of that high tech, high capability refining industry absolutely requires imports.

    So now there are is a refinery in Texas that was optimised to handle Colombian crude and would rather not get anything else. There are refineries in the north which are not only specialised for Canadian crude, they literally can’t get anything else, their infrastructure only links them to Canadian oil.

    What the US oil industry as a whole needs isn’t “drill baby drill”, it’s stable trade and low tariffs.

  14. American Oil producers can only make profit at a certain price point. They will never choose to lower the cost of oil below that number as they will go out of business.

    It is a fun chant, but the dudes drilling are doing it for the money.

  15. The US oil industry has been victim of Trump in the past and they will never let that happen again. Lost too many companies, too many bankruptcies, too many lost jobs. They are all enjoying stable profits, and managing demand to their liking. Political influence is the worst thing to happen to this global industry.

  16. No shit. $2 gas isn’t profitable. Why would they piss away their profits?

  17. It’s as if he’s a moron with no real intelligent plan? The people who voted for him are the naive people who believe that a king or a dictator can just will reality to their whims. Even with that kind of power- the world does not work like that. Read history.

  18. But those stickers told me Biden controlled oil prices! Why can’t orange?

  19. This is such a “no shit” moment.
    Why would Oil companies want to drill more and oversaturate the market?

    How people keeping falling for Trump’s charades is just baffling to me.

  20. Oops sounds like inflation ain’t going go down.

  22. Biden wasn’t blocking them from drilling. They just didn’t want to.

  23. Holy shit things are more nuanced in real life than what I hear on FOX news?

  24. So you are saying that Oil Companies don’t have the economic interests of consumers at heart when they decide production targets? The whole industry is a money grab run by the wealthy?

    Shocking . . . . . . . .

  25. Trump doesn’t understand anything about anything, and by and large, his supporters don’t either. But not only do they support him unconditionally, but they also don’t believe anything he says, because they’ve convinced themselves that even if he lies directly to their faces, it’s in service of some larger strategy. Never mind that there’s not any evidence at all that Trump has any kind of strategy for anything, and he’s actively back-stabbed or otherwise ousted everybody capable of coming up with a real strategy, and drawn to him instead only arsonists who want to destroy the government with no real plan for what to replace it.

    I mean, I don’t even know what we’re even discussing here. This all seems so obvious. Why would anybody expect sense from a guy who doesn’t have any?

  26. Let’s see now. Trump wants oil companies to produce more oil. More oil means lower price per barrel. Lower price means less profits for the oil companies. Less profits mean unhappy stockholders. And who do oil company CEO report to? Stockholders – not trump.

  28. Dear god I can’t believe I’m with the oil companies on this one.

  29. I’ve said this numerous times in this and other subs–oil executives pump when it makes business sense, not for political reasons. They have ample reasons not to blindly pump as much as they possibly can.

    WTI is $70 Brent is $74.9 right now, they aren’t going to flood the market with even more oil and push those prices lower.

  30. Why would oil companies spend a lot of money to drill and develop new sources? That’s very capital intensive, while just manipulating prices is cheap. Trump is a true moron shocking 😂😂

  31. This sounds like ” they won’t drill so I will take over in the interest of the people and drill for you”. 

  34. Discussing Trump and his followers and using the words “…in reality…” is the very definition of an anachronism.

  36. Where are all the Trump supporters in this sub with counter arguments? Oh that’s right they don’t have any valid counter arguments to offer which is why they run and hide from these kinds of posts. Bet they are in the conservative subs coming up with ridiculous counterarguments amongst themselves though.

  37. I have yet to determine if Chris Wright, Trump’s energy secretary, is as dumb as he sounds or if he just has to parrot Trump’s idiotic ideas to keep his job.

  38. “Peter Sinclair is a Midland resident and internationally-recognized videographer who studies climate change and renewable energy issues.”

    Mostly nonsense with bias, but there is some truth here. Trump wants $35 WTI to reduced supply-chain costs, and most upstream producers can’t make money at that level.

    So you have to bring nat gas demand up to offset the difference. This is why companies like Chevron are partnering in data center projects which will be the main drivers of energy demand at least the next 5 years.

  39. We have beaten Saudi Arabia in oil production and exports three years running, and may do it again this year. Oil markets are already glutted. For a man who ran for president using his so-called negotiation skills and business skills and successes as the qualifications for the presidency, he has absolutely no concept of the complexities of petroleum supply and demand. The Permian Basin, the Barnett Shale, the Bakken Shale and a number of other areas are producing all of the crude oil that can be realistically handled. What would be the point of flooding more crude into the market only to drive price-per-barrell down even further. For some of us this is actually a good thing in that it draws attention away from places like ANWAR. Why develop that oil resource so far away when you can get what you need in the lower 50 close to refining and distribution.

  40. Why would oil companies significantly increase oil production and bring down prices? Also, I was under the impression that most oil refined in the US gets exported anyway, so how would that help the American consumer?

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