Trump Throws Hail Mary Tweet on Eve of OPEC Meeting

Oilprice.com ^ | December 6, 2018 | Julianne Geiger

[con-surf-ative]

I wish I did. I live in a community that is 90% dependent on the domestic oil and gas industry. It pays for schools, roads, hospitals, and provides a stable livelihood for hundreds of thousands of families. The oil and gas exploration and production industry, unlike many others, creates huge multiples of economic opportunity. Everything from the steel, rubber, fuel, and other materials used to build, maintain and operate drilling rigs to pipeline crews and materials and trucking jobs to transport oil and gas, to the thousands of refining jobs to shipping facilities for exporting US crude oil, to the hotels, restaurants and retail businesses that are supported by the wages of oil and gas employees, not to mention the employees of hundreds of subsidiary industries that directly or indirectly involved in the process.

I have witnessed first hand when prices were manipulated, as they were in the 1980’s and the industry crashed, and I don’t really care to live through it again. The vast majority of folks who live outside of producing areas have no clue how much economic growth is supported when the industry is active. The crash of oil and gas prices in the ‘80’s was the first domino in what became a real estate crash, thousands of foreclosures and finally S&L and bank failures. Do the letters RTC ring a bell? That is where this is headed if prices stay where they are or go lower.

[Okeydoker]

I don’t doubt the effect of low prices on folks in the industry. All I am saying is that raising prices that negatively impact the entire economy to benefit a small slice of the economy, ie the oil workers, makes little sense. Remember that there are boom times and bust. I don’t recall any oil workers giving up $100/hr jobs in the Dakota areas when shale was big because their salary was disproportionate to everyone else’s in the economy.

If you are in a boom/bust industry doesn’t price fluctuations and consequences kinda come with the territory?

[con-surf-ative]

Yep, boom/bust cycles go with the territory, but we don’t need POTUS putting his thumb on the scales. If prices are too high, people quit buying, and then they drop. I am just saying let the market function.