Posted on 05/08/2016 10:03:41 PM PDT by panhandle67
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Oil drilling companies and royalty owners from the Texas Panhandle to New Mexico's stretch of the Permian Basin are embarking on a grass-roots campaign to limit foreign oil imports, salvaging what they say is a major sector of the U.S. economy.
"American oil is competing against a cartel of government operators which has a stated initiative of driving an American industry out of business," said Tom Cambridge, one of the Panhandle producers leading the campaign.
The grass-roots movement is pushing for the next president of the United States to issue a proclamation setting quotas for imports — something that hasn't been done in more than four decades.
"It's not that this is the first time but this is a more concerted, deliberate effort and I think it's gaining ground," said John Yates Jr., a member of a well-known family that is a leader in the industry and has over the last century developed some of New Mexico's largest and most significant oilfields.
(Excerpt) Read more at bigstory.ap.org ...
Quotas on heavy crude oil would be phased in and imports would eventually be limited to around 10 percent of total demand.
Supporters say they're drawing a line in the sand after more than a dozen oil-rich nations failed to agree during a recent meeting in Saudi Arabia to freeze production. They blame Middle East producers for flooding the market and fueling the price war as a means to stifle domestic production.
Oil fell in the past two years from above $100 a barrel to touch 12-year lows under $30 a barrel earlier this year, and U.S. production has dropped by as much as 700,000 barrels a day and the number of rigs in the field has sunk to historic lows.
By 2017, crude oil production is forecast to average around 8 million barrels per day, nearly 1.5 million less than in 2015, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency.
Oilfield equipment along one of the two-lane highways that link West Texas and southeastern New Mexico sits idle in company yards, and local governments and schools are feeling the pinch as severance taxes and royalties dwindle.
"Service companies, restaurants, real estate, the people building motels and hotels — there are a lot of impacts," said Yates told The Associated Press.
No way, these guys can be more efficient. The nation needs cheap energy. Don’t mess with out fuel prices!
Protect Jobs! Ban foreign made goods!
Drive small businesses under by making them try to sell $185 jeans!
Welcome to Free Republic.
The Democrats aka; environmentalists (as the enviros are the backbone of the Democrat party) would have a field day with this accusing Trump, or any opposition as being in the bag for BIG oil. They would be relentless, and could win enough seats to make any progress towards conservative values for our country just a dream.
I believe by necessity it will take more than ninety days before this issue is addressed.
Here’s an idea. ... make government so small it can’t tell anyone what wages they should make nor what prices at which they should buy or sell, so we can negotiate our own deals, and leave politicians out of it.
hmmmm buying the politicos isnt enough for you creeps? You have to come here and espouse your market manipulation crap? Go ahead. Won’t fly with this group. Beware the ZOT.
Maybe all industries should petition the next president to take measures to artificially inflate the cost of their product.
> a grass-roots campaign to limit foreign oil imports<
.
Haven’t we tried to stop depending on foreign oil for decades?
I don’t remember getting any royalty checks from you guys in the mail when we were paying $3.75 pg for gas.
That’s why we do so much outsourcing.
how is this any different than the example Trump uses at rally with the trade deficit? he wants to protect manufacturing. why not protect industry?
I suggest price supports maybe $40 per barrel or so. It always our producers a set price at which they can make money and keeps OPEC from running most of our producers out of business. Any extra oil can go into strategic reserves thus providing a safety net for national security.
As with other price supports we have often found that the floor (price support) becomes the ceiling. Where as with interest rates on credit cards the interest rate ceiling of 18% compounded to 23% or so has become the floor for many card holders.
“I suggest price supports maybe $40 per barrel...”
Are you talking about federally imposed price supports for an industry as in the same way Jimmy Cartet imposed price supports in 1978?
I like low gas prices as much as anyone else, but let those saying Americans shouldn't favor import limits answer this: Where will American gas prices be after the cartel drives American oil companies out of business, if it succeeds at that endeavor? I'm guessing somewhere close to $10/gal as Europeans used to pay - or worse. Our gas bill could go from a couple of thousand a year for individuals to ten thousand a year, perhaps a couple more trillion (that's just a top-of-the-head estimate) siphoned out of our economy by those SOBs in the Middle East.
Once prices go back up (and they will), our companies will go back to drilling here. Or new companies to replace the old ones. It’s been this way in the oil patch for a long, long time.
The Saudis want to crush the Frackers so we again depend on Saudi and Iranian oil.
$50 PPB oil is a fair price that lets us get out of the middle east, and have oil independence. No longer do we send our boys to die so the Saudis can gouge us with 100 PPB oil They even make us pay them rent while we protect them. Crazy.
The Saudis don’t want the 28 pages of the 911 report released.
I am tired of having these nasty Sheiks pull our chain.
Self sufficient should be the goal which means no imports and no exports. Oil companies don't want to live with that, though, I assure you. They have all sorts of arguments as to why they should export and spent far more on getting that through Congress than they ever have on fighting the stupid EPA regs that keep refineries and pipelines from being built. A couple of weeks before they got the right to export, in fact, they signed onto an international environmental line of crap they'd been fighting for decades. Funny how that works, one hand washing the other.
When the oil companies put America First by fighting the absurd regulations and environmental lies, then we can get somewhere. Until then, they're working towards what's best for them, a protected market here that their pals in government regulate enough to ensure them a profit and a wide open market overseas where they can do whatever sort of deal makes them the most money.
Our oil for us, that should be the underlying principle. Anything else is just a new angle on what's best for the producers.
JMHo
[”American oil is competing against a cartel of government operators which has a stated initiative of driving an American industry out of business,” said Tom Cambridge, one of the Panhandle producers leading the campaign.[
Welcome to the last 40-45 years of America. Yeah, they’re doing it all over. It’s called Open Borders, outsourcing, etc.
I would pay more for domestically produced oil. Why pay people who hate us for a commodity that we can produce?
If you take the oil money out of the Mid East the Arab nations that sponsor terrorism would collapse.
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