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June 16, 2022 07:00 AM UTC
16 Comments
I see the O&G industry is back to their SOP in trying to extort regulatory concessions from the Biden administration in exchange for cooperation on prices.
Regulation has never…I repeat…NEVER…affected prices. This is blackmail, pure and simple. THIS is why the O&G industry has earned my undying enmity. It is a soulless, greedy, rapacious collection of people who fully and wholly believe they are more important than you are.
They are relentless and completely self-absorbed. They damaged their industry with their unrestrained greed, by flooding the market with cheap oil, in an effort to break OPEC… they failed. Now they are damaging the nation and the world in order to recoup their losses.
The best solution is for the American people to show the O&G industry that we CAN live without them running the world. The solution is simple. To the extent you can, STOP USING THEIR PRODUCT. I use it, but as little as possible.
Unless, of course. you enjoy having your pockets picked so the CEO of ExxonMobil can buy a bigger yacht.
Hear, hear!!
The O&G industry will tell Biden to go pound sand. Why produce 10 barrels of oil at 5 bucks when you can product 5 barrels at 10 bucks, sit back, enjoy life, and rake in the cash? The side benefit of that is they can blame Biden for prices at the pump, which will help usher in a new crop of stooges in office in November that will do whatever they say.
There is just no benefit to them to increase production and help the Biden administration. And yes, they don't give a fuck if Americans are suffering. Pretty sick bunch of bastards.
Now if Biden can convince MBS to increase production, that is probably when the whinging will start…
The idea that regulations don’t result in higher prices is absurd. There is a cost of compliance (usually permits, fees, testing, etc…), there is also a cost of compliance management. There is so much regulatory burden on companies that most have to hire a compliance manager, and depending on the size and complexity of the regulatory environment, may need an entire team to make sure a company is compliant.
Remember, not only are we dealing with Federal regulations, each state can also impose additional regulations that have to be managed. In one particular example, a company is required to apply a sticker to items that are fine everywhere in the world except California. That sticker says “This product may contain material known in the state of California to cause cancer”. The substance in question? Silica (also found in sand).
Do you think this happens for free? It goes into the cost of goods and is factored into the price. Every single burden placed on a company is passed on to the consumer. Whether that cost is imposed by government or market conditions, it is ALWAYS the consumer that pays the price.
Greed isn’t limited to corporations. It is inherent in human nature. People will act in their own self interest. Yes, some people are also generous, and kind, and help one another. But it is hard to lift up your neighbor if you are struggling to make ends meet.
The 30% drop in the value of my 401K in the last two years not only reduces my charitable giving, it delays my retirement. So time I could have spent volunteering in my community, will now have to be spent continuing to work.
If you think your reasoning wins, you are out of luck. The kind of costs you are talking about are a pittance to the industry.
Additionally, many regulations, well pad density restrictions and fugitive methane regulations, just to mention a couple, have wound up saving the industry money.
Your arguments are specious and irrelevant. Just the kind of meaningless crap we are accustomed to hearing from the API and the CPA.
I was talking about industry in general, not specifically the oil and gas industry. My reasoning ins completely sound. I see it first hand every single day. I know what my company's compliance budget is and how many man hours are devoted making sure the constantly changing regulations are followed.
If you had a 30% drop in your 401K in the past two years. you need better advice. S&P on June 15, 2020 was just under 3000. Today it is at 3677, up about 20% in those 2 years.
Recent peak was at the end of 2021 … and the index is down 23% in the past 6 months, edging us into a bear market and within shouting distance of your 30% drop.
But as one advisor told me as I was considering a work/retire choice, past and present performance of stocks is not a guarantee of future performance. He suggested I use the lowest value of the past 5 years and decide if that was "enough" for retirement. If I did that today, I'd be looking at what my portfolio was in March of 2020, when the pandemic took the markets down — and the S&P was at ~2,300.
You are off in another world. I have a friend who makes wooden toys. He has all his metal metallurgically tested so he can sell in the EU. His business is because of regulation which protects children from exposure to lead.
I get you have a talking point but republicans have been saying this for years and didnt do shit then. Have you though of any new moral panics?
If your friend makes toys he has to have them CPSIA tested in the US too. Ask him the cost to bring a new product to market. Ask him if the testing costs are reflected in his product cost? I am not suggesting that toys should be allowed to have lead paint. But seriously – should we have to put a sticker on something to warn people about the dangers of SAND? In California? It is silly.
There are external costs of de-regulation ( or ignoring existing regulations) that the public and the planet pay, while industry does not.
Examples: lung disease and damage to developing children’s organs from methane and other airborne pollutants. Black lung disease. Cancer from asbestos. Covid deaths and disease in meatpacking plants. Lead poisoning from pipes.
etc.
This x 1,000 (or 500 billion). The fossil fuel industry (coal, natural gas, petroleum) have perfected the ‘privatize profits, socialize costs’ model. The health costs from aromatics (benzene, toluene, xylene) is in the ‘hundred billion’ sphere annually. We could replace BTX (it compromises about 30% by volume and acts as an octane enhancer) with advanced biofuels had Congress dealt with the blend wall and Detroit would have taken the small step to accommodate a higher blend. The Clean Air Act gave Congress the power to regulate the dirty three out of the product. Want to take a guess on which lobby has prevented that move for decades?
Coal combustion? A Harvard Medical study concluded the indirect health costs of coal combustion to be upwards of $500 billion annually.
If Public Utility Commissions had been required to consider externalities in their resource planning solar would have beat out coal years ago at prices 20x what the solar energy costs today.
Closer to home the costs of increased ozone from leaking methane is having a detrimental affect on Colorado agriculture.
Until we live in a world of life-cycle accounting and limits on money in politics the most challenged members of our society will continue to pay the full cost of this charade.
Like all things, we have the technology and ingenuity to fix our problems, just no political will or rural leadership capable of thinking outside of the box where corporate interests are holding them hostage.
Thank you, Reason Wins – although not as often as it should!
Some folks on this site forget that human beings are by nature driven by self-interest.
It's too bad we don't have a higher calling to which we collectively aspire.
Yep…a pity, that.
"We will assimilate your biological and technological abilities to enhance our collective aspiration to perfection. Resistance is futile."
Locutus of Borg
This is Steve Bannon’s proxy war.
(meant to be on “Catholic Bishops Withholding Communion” thread)
So Conservative Judge Luttig basically says today's GOP is the Party of Treason: