It was a quantified creeping saga these past months watching the oil industry in the US slowly go down. But it is important to note that it is a saga without a well-defined beginning. Simply put, with a globally-traded commodity, the quest for “energy independence” affects all US international relationships.
Some might say that the saga began with the Hubei lockdowns on January 23. (en.m.wikipedia.org/...)
Others might start it weeks before that when Trump tried to start a war with Iran. Economic skeptics among us saw an oil pricing dimension as critical to the president’s wag the dog action. (www.dailykos.com/...)
But this too is missing the fact that energy independence is itself a grotesque fallacy. The US oil industry (www.reuters.com/...), like the Canadian tar sands oil industry for that matter, is propped up by maintaining a hostile relationship with Iran. “Energy independence” causes the US to look at many relationships through the prism of effect on its domestic oil industry.
Nearly two years ago this was a story:
MON JUL 9, 2018 / 4:40 PM EDT
Oil prices gain on supply concerns in Iran, Libya, Canada
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices gained on Monday, with U.S. crude ending a choppy session higher on expectations for a Canadian production outage lasting until September, while global benchmark Brent gained on looming sanctions on Iran and falling output in Libya.
U.S. light crude futures gained 5 cents to settle at $73.85 a barrel. Brent jumped 96 cents at $78.07.
"We continue to see the oil market supported, with growing concern on sanctions on Iran now that the European and Korean refiners reduced their purchases to virtually zero," said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates.
(www.reuters.com/...)
We need to rescue not the US shale oil industry but the workers of all industries, past and present, aka the always desperate “reserve army of labour.” (en.m.wikipedia.org/...) We will not save the world without a truly intersectional green economy around the world, where people are working together not forced to be at each other’s throats, literally or figuratively.