Who's you daddy?
Posted on 03/06/2014 5:01:44 AM PST by thackney
The U.S. has more responses to Vladimir Putin's adventure in the Crimea than the no-options caucus suggests, including a few that weren't possible even a few years ago. Namely, a President with a keener strategic mind would unleash North American oil and gas on the world.
The Putin regime controls the taps for as much as a third of Europe's natural gas imports, including half of Ukraine's and 39% of Germany's. The European Union is less dependent now on the trans-Ukraine pipeline system than it was when Russia choked back supply in 2006 and 2009, but the U.S. oil and gas revolution could continue to shift the balance of energy power.
Begin by approving the Keystone XL pipeline. The $5.3 billion, 1,179-mile project would pump 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Alberta to Oklahoma interconnections and then on to Gulf Coast refineries. Canadian oil producers and U.S. drillers on North Dakota's Bakken Shale need more access to these refining markets, where they can displace higher-priced overseas oil imports.
The economic and even environmental case for the Keystone has been clear for more than five years, as the State Department's multi-volume studies attest. The project is currently under a 90-day State-White House review under the pretense of determining if it is in the national interest, as if that is in question. But after the last week, the strategic case for approval is even more obvious.
An added benefit is that by disappointing his climate-obsessed financiers, Mr. Obama might restore some of his international credibility. If he won't defy San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer, why would anyone think he'll confront a thug like Mr. Putin?
A President less sentimental about energy politics would also expand America's oil and gas trade....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
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Why do people incessantly assume OUR pResident has any need or desire to diminish Putin’s influence. He has been doing everything under the galaxy to exercise his “flexibility” when dealing with tyrants.
The sorry thing is the tyrant seems more of a Constitutionalist that our selected and lauded “constitutional professor”
You can always count on greed. Putin’s greed is up against Corporate America’s. Putin has inadvertently given voice to a pack of wolves that will result in the economic downfall of Russia.
Oh, you talkin’ about the Corporate America that has sold us out to the ruling class and especially this current administration?
Putin’s “greed” can only be equated to power, but since power begets monetary greed, what came first? POWER is all that any oligarch is interested in and it is a simple matter of life that the only way to that power is the purse . . . He who dies with the most toys, wins.
On either side, they continually make the same wrong assumption in that it is a perpetual motion scenario. The problem comes with the continual feeding of one on the other is that physics will eventually take over. Usually in some resemblance of an explosion or in actuality and implosion.
Personally, I see the robust economy that would result from ending high domestic energy prices as the best way to get leverage in international affairs. I understand the articles POV, but as long as our own economy is in the crapper everything else should be a distant second.
JMHO
Opening up more federal areas, onshore and off, to oil, gas, and coal production,
remove roadblocks and overbearing regulations,
quit valuing an obscure minuscule creature who has long been on the way to extinction over people
All of those would help our economy while removing power and funds from Russia by lowering energy cost and building our economy.
Exports of surplus, such as LNG, would bring even more jobs and better economy to the the US.
no export of American oil until US prices at the pump drop to $2.00 p/gal.
Who's you daddy?
We spent billions upgrading our refineries to handle cheaper, heavier, sour oil.
How about we export a little light sweet expensive oil while importing cheap heavy sour oil and even export some surplus products? All of that supplies our demand, increases our trade balance, provides more jobs in the US.
The thought that in economics the demand curve rules while the supply curve can be ignored is foolish.
“Why do people incessantly assume OUR pResident has any need or desire to diminish Putin’s influence.”
Exactly. They are both tyrants.
Unless you live in a state that deregulated the utilities, you should be benefiting from the current low prices for natural gas.
That’s fine and dandy, but supply and demand still works ... sometimes. Unfortunately for us the Arabs and OPEC decided they would control prices. If you want to end that, we need to flood the world market with oil and gas. The end result is OPEC is irrelevant. If the Saudi’s have already voiced their concern over our prodigious supplies of oil and gas, perhaps you should wonder why the are scared. Stopping the export of oil and gas would allow them to continue their game.
You want $2.00 gasoline? Flood the market with oil and gas and kill the Saudi’s ability and the trader’s manipulations which result in artificially high oil prices.
Finishing Keystone and moving the heavy Canadian crude to the southern refineries that were designed to process heavy Venezuelan crude will do just that. Knocking off a socialist regime is the icing on the cake.
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