Thursday, January 5, 2012

US Exporting More Fuel Than Importing

Well, so much for the theory of supply and demand.
In the U.S., brain addled A.D.D. Americans took about 15 seconds to forget how our economy ended up in the toilet.
The current popular one-word explanation is "Obama."  That's just stupid, since our economy was augering in when Barry was still just an obscure candidate in a messy field of Democrats trying to win G-Dub's seat.
In fact, most political pundits pointed to the tanking economy as the reason for the new White House occupant bearing a donkey on his p.j.'s.
The brainwashing of America was pretty efficient over the last four years, as people seem to recall that it was the real estate market's implosion that brought down the house of cards.
But if you go back and look at the economic news from 2008-09, you'll see something else was really knocking the pins out from under our prosperity:
Gas prices.
We've become so accustomed to gasoline hovering around the $3.50-per-gallon mark that we've forgotten it was a little more than five short years ago that we were paying around $2.50 per gallon.  By early 2008, it had briefly spiked to more than $4 per gallon before drifting back to the upper threes.
I remember vividly the world coming undone in 2008.  In my little hometown of Mesquite, tourism dried up faster than lizard piss on a desert rock.  People (myself included) quit taking vacations and driving to fun destinations.  Folks began making hard decisions between filling the family car's gas tank and buying groceries.  I wrote stories about otherwise normal, rational people buying scooters as their new means of transportation.  (And the efforts by the government to bar those gas-sipping two-wheelers from public streets.)
When the tourism stopped here, just like in Las Vegas and other resort locations, so did the number of visitors falling in love with the place and buying up new houses.  So of course, the housing market collapsed.
One of the MANY lies laid on us by Big Oil was that our demand was so high in this country for oil that it drove the price up to those lofty heights.  Then they mixed in a few artificial shortages to make that supply-and-demand picture look even more dire, including claims that storms in the Gulf of Mexico contributed to production shutdowns.  Then you had the BP oil spill that made everyone believe that our precious "supply" was currently sloshing around the shores of Mississippi.
What everyone forgets is a tiny expose' that showed the oil companies were actually systematically shutting down their refineries around the country to squeeze the supply.  They also forget that the drilling rig that exploded and sank into the Gulf was never a production well, and was one of the MANY drilling sites that oil companies actually drill then plug.
Now we find out that the "supply and demand" claim is a ruse.
Fuel demand in this country is low.  Way low.  How low?
According to a federal report in December from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the U.S. exported 753.4 million barrels of fuel in 2011, while importing just 689.4 million.
Stop and let that sink in.
It's the first time since 1950 that the United States exported more fuel than it imported.
The report claims that the reason for this upside down scenario is the fact that demand is down significantly in this country, while demand is up in other emerging countries.
So where is Big Oil's lie about demand now?
Are you ready?
Iran.
That's right, Big Oil's best friend, that obnoxious little middle eastern collection of blowhards is making threats again.  They've done it before, which made the oil markets quake and gas prices at the pumps skyrocket, despite the fact that the U.S. doesn't get oil from Iran.  (Can't let a little thing like that get in the way of commerce, right?)
But this time the ululaters have a new game.
Iran is threatening to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which is a choke point for oil shipping between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.
This sounds pretty impressive and scary, until you realize the only major oil-exporting countries to be affected by that would be the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and, um, Iran.  (Saudi Arabia also uses the Persian Gulf, but they have the option of shipping from Red Sea ports on their other coast.) It's like a child saying they're going to hold their breath until they turn blue if they don't get their way.  And they're making this threat because the U.S. has called them out on their nuclear program.
I know, what one thing has to do with the other is the kind of disjointed thinking that can only come out of an Iranian mind.
Of course this is an idle bluff.
For starters, when was the last time you heard of the Iranian Navy doing anything?  About quarter-past never.  It would be like me threatening to blockade the port of Los Angeles because I got a new canoe for Christmas.
However, the Henny Pennys and Ducky Luckys in the oil futures markets are wringing their hands and jacking up the price of oil like they've just heard about a shortage of that rare chemical Sodium Chloride.  (For those a few years distant from Chemistry 101, that's table salt, one of the most plentiful things on earth thanks to the briny oceans covering two-thirds of our planet).
And as anyone who casually follows the oil industry in today's world knows, the price of oil has absolutely nothing to do with production costs, supply, demand, or anything else borne of logic.  The price of oil is all about whim and illusion.
Sadly, this means that one of the things I've been ranting about for nearly a decade has been proven wrong.
I've mistakenly believed that American consumers could bitch slap the oil companies into shape by simply getting together and strategically boycotting their product.
Turns out, the demand has nothing to do with the price of gas, even though the U.S. is allegedly still the biggest consumer market in the world.  The cigar smokers at Exxon, Chevron, and the rest of the boardroom bullies will simply jack up the prices even higher, then sell it to Duhdumastan.
So I surrender.  The fat cats have the game rigged, and there's nothing we can do about it.  We certainly can't expect our government to do anything, so long as campaign contributions from oil companies continue to be the main source of income for our senators and congressmen.
So we just have to pay whatever the honchos say until someone can figure out how to make those goofy looking little scooters sold in 2008 run on Sodium Chloride.

No comments:

Post a Comment