Oil prices
I’d like to revisit our earlier video about Dale Sweetland’s claims about oil prices. Sweetland seems to be claiming that by “saying we’re going to drill”, we can lower the price of oil futures substantially. But that’s just not true because (1) it takes about 5-10 years for the new sites to start producing large quantities of oil and (2) the quantities probably won’t be large enough to put a significant dent in oil price. To wit, we’ve seen estimates that opening up ANWR to drilling would probably only lower the price of gas by about 75 cents per barrel. There is simply no way that “saying we’re going drill” is the reason crude prices have dropped 15 bucks a barrel over the past weeks. The much more likely causes of of this drop, as commenter GhostOfMurrow points out, are increased production from Saudi Arabia and a decrease in demand (which is a natural reaction, of course, to higher prices).
Along these lines, the Messenger-Post has an editorial up about Kuhl’s ridiculous ideas about lowering the price of oil by 2 bucks a gallon. The title says it all “Never mind those oil experts.”
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My sense is that the drilling line of argument is burning out. It’s being thoroughly debunked by the media, and it makes Republicans, the supposed conservatives, sound like they don’t give a shit about future generations. It peaked too early.
Exile sez:
Actually, what Sweetland said is logically impossible, even if the Rethuglicans were right about the prices (which they are not), simply saying something doesn’t make prices go up or down.
True. I’m trying to interpret his comment in the most generous way possible and then show that, even then, it doesn’t make sense.