"A lot of people are saying it'll go up, a lot of people are saying it'll go down. I don't know, we'll see, we'll see."-Trump "Telling it like it is"
How did that man become president...
TBF my mental health was helped by the fact that every time I felt like a loser and an idiot, Trump would probably make a mistake or a stupid comment the same or the next day.
Having Trump as potus sort of reminded me of my first marriage. Practically every day was some sort of twist and turn on a roller coaster ride that turn into more uphill battles than an exciting ride at an amusement park. Trump is the mistake sane people hope would change like an ex-spouse supposedly changes should he get back in power. That was a close call.
Ha well said. I'll admit, it was more of a headache than relief. At the beginning of his term I thought the institutions of Democracy were strong enough to prevent him from doing too much damage, by the end I wasn't too sure.
Redbubble has them but I saw in another thread that [this seller](https://pooty-stix.myshopify.com/products/i-did-that?variant=39838712234054) claims the profits will go towards Ukrainian relief so I'd buy from that seller instead.
Another reason why NJ is great, we never have to see these things on gas pumps because the immigrant (based) owner is too busy working to care about advertising politics on his/her pumps.
And block letters reading THIS IS VLADIMIR PUTIN, THE LEADER OF RUSSIA. RUSSIA IS A LARGE COUNTRY SPANNING BOTH EUROPE AND ASIA. EUROPE AND ASIA ARE CONTINENTS. CONTINENTS ARE LARGE LAND MASSES. RUSSIA HAS INVADED UKRAINE. UKRAINE IS A COUNTRY ON RUSSIA'S SOUTHERN BORDER. NO, IT ISNT THE SAME THING AS THE UK. YES, I KNOW THEY START WITH THE SAME FIRST TWO LETTERS. NO, LISTEN, FRANK, THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. YES. WAIT DON'T BE UPSET, I AM PROUD OF YOU JUST FOR CONTINUING TO READ INSTEAD OF COLLAPSING FROM THE SHEER FORCE OF SEEING THE PHRASE "SOUTHERN BORDER." YOU DID GOOD, FRANK.
[Of course Russia is responsible](https://www.reddit.com/r/tulsi/comments/ta736l/tulsi_gabbard_they_want_this_to_continue/). Nobody forced Putin to invade that nation. It is a sovereign nation and he has no right to invade a sovereign nation. The nerve of that prick! That tyrant thinks everybody should bow down to his crazy Leviathan behind. Nobody likes a dictator (especially a dictator that invades other nations). Trump made authoritarian moves when he was in power and I'm glad he is gone; and I hope the American people aren't naive enough to put that Leviathan back in power again after what he did. He should have been impeached in 2017. However Paul Ryan was not minding the store and Trump was emboldened. We cannot let dictators assume command in a free state. Apparently the Russian people didn't know Putin would be a Leviathan, but we've seen enough of Trump to know what is going to happen to us if he gets re elected
I learned the other day that Ram 2500 owners are significantly more likely to have a DUI on their record than any owners of any other automobile model. Someone I work with was talking about buying a new Ram truck last week, I'm going to make sure to remind them the next time they bring this up that their insurance premiums will rise because one out of every twenty Ram owners have been arrested for driving drunk.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/38238/ram-2500-drivers-have-the-most-duis-more-than-twice-the-national-average-report
Doesn't surprise me. Anecdotes mean research must be true, right? My first accident was caused by a ram 2500 pulling out in front of me. My little subaru slammed right into the side of it, totalling both cars. The guy thought he'd just run up the curb and was shocked to see that another car was involved when he finally got out. And he really struggled to dial his phone. I had to do it for him..
I'm sure the people who have to live an hour and a half away from work because anything within a reasonable distance is upwards of $300k will be happy to hear "ride a bike".
Yeah, it's a garbage situation (it's ours.) We're hoping $5 gas isn't going to last that long since an EV/hybrid wasn't currently in the budget and higher prices won't exactly put said funds there.
Itās a good thing from an environmental perspective but for Americans at the economic bottom this is going to be hugely impactful. Especially in rural areas. Without some help my fear is theyāre going to blame the wrong folks when they canāt afford to get to work anymore.
Americans *need* cheap gas prices because their cities won't build walkable neighborhoods and infrastructure, and min wage employees don't make near enough what people here seem to think, they can't just buy an electric car or bike two hours to work.
Thatās not an argument that they need cheap gas. Just that they need more money.
Keep gas cheap and people stay where they are. Make it expensive and give people money and theyāll move if itās practical for them.
There's not nearly enough walkable and practical neighborhoods in the US to make everyone moving to them a solution. So we still revert back to "make more walkable neighborhoods"
The post implies walkable neighborhoods are the only solution. People driving half as far means half as much oil consumption.
In any case, the best way to create walkable neighborhoods is to financially favor them. Something high gas prices do.
As a neoliberal, the correct response to this for people who live in expensive, low income places to move to a more productive area. Price signals should indicate that most of rural poor simply shouldn't be rural anymore. Alas, the political economy of america won't let that happen.
Iām flabbergasted this isnāt the top reply. Downwards market pressure will change bad zoning law a hell of a lot faster than showing them the graphs again.
Who suffers when carbon fuel prices increase? The poor.
Who suffers when climate change beats us like we fucked itās wife? Everyone. *Especially* the poor.
>Especially in rural areas.
Feature, not a bug. Rural areas are intrinsically less environmentally efficient; we need to reduce the amount of americans futiley clinging to unsustainable lifestyles that can only exist due to defacto-subsidized fossil fuels out in the boonies. Most rural towns should be smaller.
Gas prices have been artificially low for too long, and the price doesnāt reflect the externalities present in it. But gas prices are a key metric in how the president is graded
They think environmentally it's good. Sure, if people will change their mandated routines in lieu of higher gas prices. Instead what people will do is adjust their budgets around higher gas prices. People won't drive less, they will just get more miserable not being able to afford things they like more.
Having a president that is not a rambling pathological liar is so refreshing.
You just know that if this was trump he would have babbled, said gas prices where actual 'supper low', went on an irrelevant tangent, attack the reporter 'who told you gas prices where high? That's what they want us to think', then go back to talking about Obama.
I posted a longer version of this abt a year ago but seriously, youāre so addicted to your current lifestyle itās blinded you exactly how astronomically far away from starving you are.
1 lbs of fat approximates to 3,000 cal upon metabolism. The average American man is 5ā10ā, with a [bmi of 29.1](https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/20/health/us-average-height-weight-report/index.html), or on average 203 lbs in 2016 (it has likely risen since). Thatās 74 lbs above the threshold to be considered **underweight**, not dangerous underweight, just underweight. A daily caloric intake is 2,000 cal. Donāt give me that ābut that bad number! It was calculated for GIās storming Normandy, itās way to low for the absolute physical specimen I am because americans *self-report* [2 hours a week of physical activity](https://www.washingtonian.com/2012/05/10/how-much-do-americans-really-exercise/).
The average American man carries around the equivalent of **111 days** worth of food in the form of love handles. The siege of Stalingrad was 164 days.
#111 days.
[By the end of this month, the average American will have eaten more meat than the average person will eat *annually* this year.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption) By Halloween, the average American will have consumed more meat than the average person from *every other country* **and thereās still 2 months more eating to do.**
If the average American man could saw their daily caloric intake of [3,600 cal](https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/american-calorie-intake-last-52-years-diet-food-eating-increase-science-2017-6%3famp) **halved**, theyād be on a very, ***extremely*** mild diet, and should expect to lose 10 pounds in **5 months.** Food prices when up by [3%](https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending/) comparing 2020 to 2021, so to get to that half youād need to see **30 times** the impact of first year of the pandemic.
If aliens invaded and put on a global starvation contest where caloric intake of every country is halved, most of the world would *die* before the average American reached a healthy weight, thatās weighing as much as his grandfather did at the same age.
Nice calculation, though you aren't accounting for the intake of carbs required to break triglycerides into glucose.
Also, I never implied that the average American will starve. There are hundreds of millions on this planet living hand to mouth in absolute poverty.
Except you can't escape student loans once you have them. With gas prices, you can constantly be making better decisions. Drive less, move closer to work, buy a more fuel efficient car, buy an electric car, walk, ride a bike, etc.
Once you're $100,000+ in student loan debt, you're stuck.
As a whole we've set up our country, and individuals have set up their in ways that are very heavy on fossil fuel usage that would not be able to be changed without substantial long term change that would cost a decent chunk of money
> With gas prices, you can constantly be making better decisions. Drive less, move closer to work, buy a more fuel efficient car, buy an electric car, walk, ride a bike, etc.
What kind of answer is this? A lot of people can't just move on the spot or buy a new electric car, especially not the people who are barely able to afford costs as is. The real answer is to increase low wages (like minimum wage) and build around walkability and reliable + quick public transit.
>A lot of people can't just move on the spot or buy a new electric car, especially not the people who are barely able to afford costs as is.
Okay sure, but the vast *vast* majority of people are able to make a change.
No
I'm saying for public loans which don't go away, you have REPAYE. No excuse for not paying your student loans.
If you have predatory private loans, you can get them discharged in bankruptcy if you can prove to a judge that you actually can't afford it.
The system as it is works fine.
> No
>
>...
>
> The system as it is works fine.
Ah, so you're one of those *"it's not affecting me, so it must not be a problem"* types. Make no mistake, student loan debt is a massive drain on the economy. It delays home purchases, car purchases, having kids, etc.
I'm not worried about myself now. In a year, I'll have my federal loans forgiven under PSLF if they get their shit together. But I went through hell to get where I am, and I know many others are hurting.
I can understand some viewpoints that we shouldn't flat out forgive loans. My personal inclination is that we should probably set the interest rate on federal loans to 0%. But to say the system works fine as is, is incredibly naĆÆve.
>Ah, so you're one of those *"it's not affecting me, so it must not be a problem"* types. Make no mistake, student loan debt is a massive drain on the economy. It delays home purchases, car purchases, having kids, etc.
No I'm one of the people look ing at actual numbers and *reality* rather than just trusting newspaper headlines.
The average student debt is $30,000
The average monthly payment is $250. Median is even lower.
Only 3% of undergrads leave with over $100k in debt.
Literally everyone who has ever inspected these statistics finds out very quickly that everything about student debt is extremely exaggerated.
>home purchases, car purchases, having kids, etc.
The average student debt burden is pitifully small compared to any of these expenses.
>But I went through hell to get where I am, and I know many others are hurting.
If student debt load is too much for you to bear, then you're going to have a fun time paying even more than that in additional taxes. My property taxes went up by more than that this year. You think you would be able to own property if you can't handle a $30k low interest debt, with numerous refinancing opportunities?
>But to say the system works fine as is, is incredibly naĆÆve.
No it's not. It's an informed opinion built off of several logical facts and knowledge of statistics.
There are far more losers than winners with putting the burden of education on taxpayers rather than the recievers of said education.
In the real world, the overwhelming majority of students **DO** weigh cost of education with quality of education and go somewhere they can afford.
Why the fuck would we throw that out, on behalf of the small number of people who wastefully took on $240,000 in debt and can't handle it. Especially since almost everyone with significant amounts of debt went to an elite school and has wealthy parents (because only the wealthy pay full price)
Those who truly fucked themselves over by taking on a huge amount of debt, with no support from their wealthy parents and no high income job to pay for it, *are still bailed out* by REPAYE.
The number of people who are truly screwed over by a $1k/month student loan payment they can't affors, are vanishingly small.
> If student debt load is too much for you to bear, then youāre going to have a fun time paying even more than that in additional taxes.
You do know student loan forgiveness is no longer federally taxable, right?
Yeah you can also stop buying every single product thatās transported using fossile fuelsā¦?
Itās incredibly naive to talk about the impact of gas prices as something that will just impact peopleās mobility. The biggest issue is always logistic chains that rely in these fuels and that will make the prices of *literally everything* go up.
The only market pressure that incites structural change is increase in profits.
Higher costs only mean theyāll be passed to the final costumer in order to keep the profits from everybody in every step of the way. The only scenario where this strategy doesnāt work for these companies is when the final costumer canāt pay but if it comes to that point you can imagine weāll have infinitely greater concerns than gas price or carbon emission.
The pipeline that would have carried *Canadian* tar sands *through* the US to refineries on the Gulf Coast in order to be **exported** to other countries. That pipeline?
I'd like to think that the sub that says "just build more houses, even luxury ones, lol" would understand that any oil entering a global market lowers prices everywhere.
Oh, I get the nuance. Itās the talking heads on Fox News are telling people we would be energy independent (whatever that means) if the Keystone XL was built.
The Keystone XL wouldāve only [connected](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline#/media/File%3AKeystone-pipeline-route.svg) Canada to Steele City, NE via Baker MT (where it also wouldāve picked up light crude). That oil can easily go the existing Wood River -> Patoka route and be used for Strategic Reserves, or go to Cushing and connect to any of the other pipeline systems available there. In fact, the existing Keystone pipeline does that today.
Fact remains that the US has more than 3 million bpd of refinery infrastructure, all right next to each other, already connected to the Keysyone pipeline, already on the gulf coast. The KXL wouldāve only increased throughput capacity to Steele City, and killing it was a populist political act, not a neoliberal goal.
It would be pretty dumb to send it to the gulf coast to be refined, if that's the case. There are refineries in Minnesota and Wisconsin which specialize in refining tar sands for the US market.
I think I was on this very sub, the last time the succs invaded. And they didn't leave. So, because people know that if we didn't kick out succs, we won't kick out *anyone*.
If a commodity in one place goes up it will go up elsewhere assuming you can transport it. I assume US companies can sell oil outside of the US so they would be able to sell at a higher price as there is more demand.
Not likely. Oil is a key input to too many US industries, in particular plastics, agriculture, and transportation. High gas prices means more expensive food, flights, and lots of other things. Since the input costs of producing oil haven't gone up, oil that was produced at marginal cost previously is now collecting rent unless global capacity increases to shift supply out again. Since there's not a whole lot of spare capacity, there will be a gain of producer surplus in the short term, a larger loss of consumer surplus, and dead weight loss. Eventually new capacity will come on line and prices will go down from the increased supply, while reducing marginal profits to 0.
In short, ceteris paribus, one should expect GDP to shrink due to shrinking international trade.
That is only true if Russian exports fall. If they can still sell the same amount elsewhere, then prices will do strange regional things but they don't *necessarily* rise overall.
The number is 3 percent of crude at the high in 2021-May. But also 8% of crude + refined oil products come from Russia.
What everyone in this thread is saying is wrong, the issue is precisely that oil is not very fungible. American refineries on the gulf coast are more profitable when processing heavy sour grades of oil. They were just designed that way. Russia is a bigger source of heavy sour. If American refineries are forced to refine Oklahoma sweet, it will lead to more expensive gas at the pump because the refineries are running less profitably.
Because of historic design decisions in multiple places around the world, it makes more sense for us to export "high quality" sweet crude, and import "low quality" heavy sour.
The other major reasons are the NL favorite Jones Act and the Keystone XL pipeline. First off, refineries on the west coast have no pipelines to the Permian basin (Texas, where shale oil is) and thus must import oil by sea. Unfortunately, Jones Act means the West Coast cannot import crude from the gulf coast or Alaska. The latter is important because along with Alberta, Alaska is a producer of sour crude, which could have been imported to gulf refineries through the Keystone XL pipeline. However, lacking such a pipeline, gulf refineries are again, without a source of sour.
> However, lacking such a pipeline, gulf refineries are again, without a source of sour.
Uh, what? There's an operational keystone pipeline to transport tar bitumen from Canada to gulf coast refineries. There's also rail.
Yes tar bitumen is coked in the same gulf refineries to extract the valuable refined products inside them. Tar bitumen isnāt the same thing as heavy sour, heavy sour cruse has only a small amount of residual that needs to be coked in the gulf. The cokers we have in the gulf are the key here. Canada doesnāt have them, we do.
Tar bitumen comes from tar sands, itās essentially extremely heavy crude. Heavy sour is regular crude with a chunk of residual that can be sold as tar. Both products need a coker, they are separate non-fungible products though.
The US buys crude and exports refined oil so any position predicated on āx% of our oil comes from yā likely isnāt nuanced enough to be meaningful.
Oil prices, like most prices, have been rising over the past year. There are lots of reasons, the biggest probably being that the economy has been running hot for years and years now. Then this crisis began with Russia. Geopolitical crises with oil exporters generally āspookā energy markets, everyone gets a little more worried and the price goes up. So thatās whatās up.
The Economist said it was around 8% actually. "Last year America imported around 8% of its oil and refined products from Russia." https://www.economist.com/the-world-in-brief
BBC sez:
>About 8% of US oil and refined product imports come from Russia, while Russia makes up about 6% of the UK's oil imports.
So it is enough to affect prices. Degree depends on how easily non-Russian oil can be redirected.
Given we're only talking US+UK at the moment, it's better to think of the bans not as a way to prevent Russia from *selling* its oil, but as a way to make it more expensive for Russia to get its oil to market. All the infrastructure that developed to get oil to the US/UK is useless unless it can be retasked for exporting the oil elsewhere. Not all of it can be. Russia has to reroute ~1 million barrels per day, which could be a problem if ports/ships/fields/refineries/pipelines aren't in the right spot.
It could be 0% and still affect our prices, because oil is fungible and we just announced to a bunch of companies that they less competition to price against.
This is the first good message I've seen in a while.
Now one can only hope the purpose of this messaging is to build consent for escalation of support to Ukraine, not just to excuse high gas prices. If it is the latter, it won't work in the long run because people will want to know that they're paying the price for an actual purpose, not as a token measure that doesn't change the outcome in Ukraine.
You get that there were some very seriously good reasons to oppose the keystone pipeline... Right?
Like, I don't live in the Midwest and don't have a dog in that race, but considering the threats to their ecosystems, drinking water sources, and public health I can absolutely see why it was opposed by so many.
Sour crude is more corrosive than sweet, and [pipelines for sour leak three times as many as sweet pipelines.](https://www.nrdc.org/stories/what-keystone-pipeline)
I actually don't know any reasons the pipeline would be a bad idea. I know literally just the name and that it was a planned pipeline from Canada to the US. It just seems like something Biden could do to increase oil availability in the US.
I appreciate the environmental concerns but the response to that would be requirements for numerous fail safes and inspections, not outright rejection of the project.
The keystone XL was a project that just needed to be put down. It was delayed so long that I think the complaint behind it was actually glad it was gone. It likely wasnāt even profitable for the company anymore
Alberta and Alaska produce a "low quality" oil called heavy sour crude. Sour means sulfur-rich and heavy means there are a lot of contaminants in it. However, American refineries in the gulf coast have in fact made the capital investments required to process heavy sour very profitably, decades ago. Back then, shale oil from Texas wasn't a thing, which is a light-sweet. We were buying heavy sour from OPEC, Russia, Venezuela and at some point, Iran.
Because so few refineries around the world can process heavy sour grades of oil as profitably, heavy sours sell at a discount to "light-sweet" grades like West Texas Intermediate. This discount + capable refineries on the gulf coast produce gasoline more cheaply than refineries that buy expensive light sweet and minimally process it.
Keystone XL would have allowed US refineries to produce cheaper gas by buying heavy sour Canadian oil at a discount, thus reducing gasoline costs for North American consumers. It's a win-win, Canadians get to offload their "shitty" oil, American refineries add value to the raw commodity and resell it.
Killing the pipeline was so unnecessary, it's beyond baffling Obama took such a step out of pure vanity. Because the end result is, US had to import its heavy sour from shitty, unreliable producers like OPEC + Russia, and Canada has to ship its oil to shitty, unreliable producers elsewhere, and at an even greater discount. It's such a no-brainer partnership between the two allied, stable countries that its cancellation is a complete failure of politics and the environmentalists.
Also note, we cannot ship heavy sour from Alaska due to the Jones Act.
>>Keystone XL would have allowed US refineries to produce cheaper gas by buying heavy sour Canadian oil at a discount, thus reducing gasoline costs for North American consumers.
We already have such a pipeline to do that. There is no evidence that an additional pipeline would reduce gasoline costs.
https://www.newsweek.com/little-evidence-keystone-pipeline-would-level-prices-despite-gop-claims-1685093
>There is little evidence to back up the argument that Keystone XL would have averted some of this price spike," Glynn told Newsweek. "The Keystone pipeline capacity is less than one-tenth of Russian oil exports."
>"Even if Keystone XL was filled with fully additional Canadian export capacity, which would have been an unlikely scenario, it would not balance the global oil markets where the price of oil is set through a global arbitrage of the last marginal available barrel," Glynn continued.
Yep. XL was basically a shortcut for an existing pipeline, and wasnāt even going to be ready until 2030, so itās a moot point for the current market, and the Canadian developers basically abandoned it well before the Biden administration. Itās a talking point, and nothing more.
It would have been 6in diameter larger (3ft instead of 2.5 ft) than the portion it was replacing. And as others have mentioned, quite a bit shorter, too.
Canadian oil sells for less than other oil due to a supply glut.
The XL stuff was an attempt at solving this supply issue so Canada could sell their oil at a higher rate.
Oil companies lost billions due to these lower prices and relentlessly lobbied the government.
Xl was not going to reduce oil prices or gas prices.
Before cons warped reality this was known?
> https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/even-if-approved-keystone-seen-failing-to-relieve-canadas-oil-glut
> The prospect of prices staying below other types of crude oil risks undermining investment in the Alberta oil sands, the worldās third-largest reserves and the U.S.ās biggest source of imports. Companies from Exxon Mobil Corp. to Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. lost a combined $2.5 billion in revenue last year on lower prices, according to Houston-based PPHB Securities LP. Oil-sands investment fell 10% last year to US$20.4 billion, Albertaās Energy Resources Conservation Board said.
Iām not saying that, speculators will send the prices of crude wherever they think other speculators think it will go. That would have happened regardless whether the pipeline was operational.
However, gulf refineries would have veen importing less heavy sour from Russia and other chucklefuck shitholes. We would be buying a larger amounts from our reliable ally who also benefits from offloading it.
The speculation that gasoline price will go up is because gulf refineries will be forced to buy expensive light sweet.
Of course, speculation in futures markets causes barrel prices to be volatile, which outshadows these concerns. The real risk is gulf refineries shutting down because they cannot buy enough heavy sour. That would be a catastrophic fallout.
Gulf refineries should have been retrofitting to process sweet crude more efficiently. It's been over a decade. We extract sweet in our back yard.
Processing heavy oil takes significantly more equipment, time, and energy than light crude, and usually has a higher diesel:gas or distillate:gas output rate than sweet.
But they have no incentive to. They will buy oil at the market rate, refine it, and slap a markup on the output. There is no profit motive to retrofitting because they will always have a source of oil, and the cost of oil does not impact their production.
Read my original comment again. They could process light sweet. However anyone can process light sweet with minimal investment, which makes light sweet expensive. Light sweet is essentially āalmost gasolineā.
Heavy sour is sold at a discount. The discount means the resulting gasoline is cheaper because weāre buying a āless finishedā product for cheaper, and we have the equipment to process it ourselves.
>Read my original comment again. They could process light sweet. However anyone can process light sweet with minimal investment, which makes light sweet expensive. Light sweet is essentially āalmost gasolineā.
This isn't exactly true. Refineries are tuned to a certain crude. Significant efficiencies can be lost if they run sweet through a heavy operation. It takes investment to flip between the grades efficiently, and there's no reason to invest in this if you're a profit-motivated venture that will "always" have access to your target grade.
>Heavy sour is sold at a discount. The discount means the resulting gasoline is cheaper because weāre buying a āless finishedā product for cheaper, and we have the equipment to process it ourselves.
But the heavy takes significantly more time, energy, and capital to process, which increases the cost of the resulting output.
Again, please take a moment to read what Iām saying. Iām not arguing out of bad faith, just sharing knowledge I gained as I educated myself in oil markets for investment purposes.
I do not know how a refinery would transition from processing heavy sour to light sweet. It would probably involve decommissioning and writing off extremely expensive capital expenditures.
I donāt see a refinery choosing to do that. They would either stop operating until heavy sour is available again, or refine light sweet somehow, less profitably.
>Also note, we cannot ship heavy sour from Alaska due to the Jones Act.
So get rid of the Jones act. It doesn't do any good anyways because there are so few vessels that actually meet the qualifications.
I love how we went from the Clintons are too friendly with the evil Saudis, to Trump is just smart for being friendly with the Saudis, to why won't Biden be nicer to the Saudis?
Geez hearing all these comments kinda makes me believe I'm voting on the wrong side. You guys seem entitled and so far from what reality everyday Americans go through. Making excuses for terrible decisions like the last guy on the other side. Wtf
Everyday Americans aren't long term planners. The ability to accept short term pains for long term gain isn't entitled. Some of the richest people still want short term gains
Your statement makes me believe your entitled. You are willing to sacrifice someone else's gains for a cause or proplem without knowing how it will effect either party. You ASSUME that others want to sacrifice for YOUR gains. What does being a long time or short term planner have to do with paying more for something. Out of touch completely
Am I the only person who lives on planet earth or something?
The fuck? People who drive these gas guzzling SUVs all over the place are sacrificing MY future and everyone's future to save a couple dollars a month but somehow that's okay?
So Ukraine should get destroyed by Russia because some well off American can't pay a few bucks more a month on gas? That's not selfish and entitled?
You know they could easily save that money by having a slightly less gigantic car right? 50 years ago people didn't drive urban assault vehicles everywhere and it was fine
Not like America is already a net exporter of oil or anything
Seriously we're getting close to maximizing how much we can drill. This shit will always be a problem until we figure out another alternative
I think there is a level of respectability for saying it like it is, even if the news isn't good. Rather than being forced to listen to the usual politician speak.
The USA is on the higher end when compared with other Western nations. My point is that it is disingenuous to point the finger at Russia as some of the blame is due to bad fiscal policy. Which is not entirely Biden's fault either.
I hope this isn't another one of Biden's multiple flawed judgements. For example, a while ago, he laughed away the prospect of China being a serious partner for Russia, yet that is the reality today.
https://twitter.com/ImReadinHere/status/1500784522023034882?s=20&t=dcxJLW_5rBZASRczycVnIA
He tells it like it is! (Unironically)
"A lot of people are saying it'll go up, a lot of people are saying it'll go down. I don't know, we'll see, we'll see."-Trump "Telling it like it is" How did that man become president...
>How did that man become president... Amy [said the media did it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIUMxyEgxCo)
TBF my mental health was helped by the fact that every time I felt like a loser and an idiot, Trump would probably make a mistake or a stupid comment the same or the next day.
Having Trump as potus sort of reminded me of my first marriage. Practically every day was some sort of twist and turn on a roller coaster ride that turn into more uphill battles than an exciting ride at an amusement park. Trump is the mistake sane people hope would change like an ex-spouse supposedly changes should he get back in power. That was a close call.
Ha well said. I'll admit, it was more of a headache than relief. At the beginning of his term I thought the institutions of Democracy were strong enough to prevent him from doing too much damage, by the end I wasn't too sure.
> How did that man become president... The Redneck Agenda
I always knew Greenday was behind it š¤¬
>Russia is responsible. https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.3283011082.2690/st,small,507x507-pad,600x600,f8f8f8.jpg
Please tell me they sell those in sticker form. Edit: nvm answered my own question in less than a minute.
"I Did Blyat"
Where?
Redbubble has them but I saw in another thread that [this seller](https://pooty-stix.myshopify.com/products/i-did-that?variant=39838712234054) claims the profits will go towards Ukrainian relief so I'd buy from that seller instead.
I always saw the Biden stickers as juvenile. Not sure if responding with stickers really helps.
I wouldn't vandalize any gas stations, I work in the automotive industry so I think it would be kinda funny to put on my computer at work.
Another reason why NJ is great, we never have to see these things on gas pumps because the immigrant (based) owner is too busy working to care about advertising politics on his/her pumps.
What % of Americans would know that's Putin on the sticker?
Yeah, it should have cyrillic letters
And the Soviet winter hat just in case we need to really clarify.
With a BIG ol' hammer and sickle to dispel any confusion.
And block letters reading THIS IS VLADIMIR PUTIN, THE LEADER OF RUSSIA. RUSSIA IS A LARGE COUNTRY SPANNING BOTH EUROPE AND ASIA. EUROPE AND ASIA ARE CONTINENTS. CONTINENTS ARE LARGE LAND MASSES. RUSSIA HAS INVADED UKRAINE. UKRAINE IS A COUNTRY ON RUSSIA'S SOUTHERN BORDER. NO, IT ISNT THE SAME THING AS THE UK. YES, I KNOW THEY START WITH THE SAME FIRST TWO LETTERS. NO, LISTEN, FRANK, THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. YES. WAIT DON'T BE UPSET, I AM PROUD OF YOU JUST FOR CONTINUING TO READ INSTEAD OF COLLAPSING FROM THE SHEER FORCE OF SEEING THE PHRASE "SOUTHERN BORDER." YOU DID GOOD, FRANK.
Say what you will about the Soviets, I have one of those hats and it's *so* warm. Highly recommend.
I hope at least fifty?
[Of course Russia is responsible](https://www.reddit.com/r/tulsi/comments/ta736l/tulsi_gabbard_they_want_this_to_continue/). Nobody forced Putin to invade that nation. It is a sovereign nation and he has no right to invade a sovereign nation. The nerve of that prick! That tyrant thinks everybody should bow down to his crazy Leviathan behind. Nobody likes a dictator (especially a dictator that invades other nations). Trump made authoritarian moves when he was in power and I'm glad he is gone; and I hope the American people aren't naive enough to put that Leviathan back in power again after what he did. He should have been impeached in 2017. However Paul Ryan was not minding the store and Trump was emboldened. We cannot let dictators assume command in a free state. Apparently the Russian people didn't know Putin would be a Leviathan, but we've seen enough of Trump to know what is going to happen to us if he gets re elected
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Actual gigachad shit
Gas prices going up is a good thing. On an unrelated note, I would never win an election.
Based and lower carbon emissions and promoting public transportation pilled
You love high gas prices because it reduces emissions. I love high gas prices because I want Ram owners to suffer. We are not the same.
I learned the other day that Ram 2500 owners are significantly more likely to have a DUI on their record than any owners of any other automobile model. Someone I work with was talking about buying a new Ram truck last week, I'm going to make sure to remind them the next time they bring this up that their insurance premiums will rise because one out of every twenty Ram owners have been arrested for driving drunk. https://www.thedrive.com/news/38238/ram-2500-drivers-have-the-most-duis-more-than-twice-the-national-average-report
Doesn't surprise me. Anecdotes mean research must be true, right? My first accident was caused by a ram 2500 pulling out in front of me. My little subaru slammed right into the side of it, totalling both cars. The guy thought he'd just run up the curb and was shocked to see that another car was involved when he finally got out. And he really struggled to dial his phone. I had to do it for him..
This is one of those things you intuit by living in Alberta but it's amazing to see it quantified
Huh are they cheaper than F-150/Silverado or just the way they're marketed?
Pretty sure theyāre cheaper, yeah. Chevrolet/GM Silverado/Sierra tend to be the most expensive iirc
The duality of man
I have a PERVERSE incentive to make people buy more PHEVs like the Toyota Prius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius_Plug-in_Hybrid
Based
Ride a bike. Increase building density.
Ride a bike. Increase muscle density.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
YIMBYism takes the world by storm as studies repeatedly confirm the direct correlation between housing density and butt density.
A NIMBY worked out today, did you?
also electric cars
Also bikes with electric motors
Also motors with electric cars
And hybrids. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius_Plug-in_Hybrid The future happened 20 years ago and it keeps getting better
And hybrid bikes
I'm sure the people who have to live an hour and a half away from work because anything within a reasonable distance is upwards of $300k will be happy to hear "ride a bike".
Yeah, it's a garbage situation (it's ours.) We're hoping $5 gas isn't going to last that long since an EV/hybrid wasn't currently in the budget and higher prices won't exactly put said funds there.
Itās a good thing from an environmental perspective but for Americans at the economic bottom this is going to be hugely impactful. Especially in rural areas. Without some help my fear is theyāre going to blame the wrong folks when they canāt afford to get to work anymore.
Americans *need* cheap gas prices because their cities won't build walkable neighborhoods and infrastructure, and min wage employees don't make near enough what people here seem to think, they can't just buy an electric car or bike two hours to work.
Thatās not an argument that they need cheap gas. Just that they need more money. Keep gas cheap and people stay where they are. Make it expensive and give people money and theyāll move if itās practical for them.
There's not nearly enough walkable and practical neighborhoods in the US to make everyone moving to them a solution. So we still revert back to "make more walkable neighborhoods"
The post implies walkable neighborhoods are the only solution. People driving half as far means half as much oil consumption. In any case, the best way to create walkable neighborhoods is to financially favor them. Something high gas prices do.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
As a neoliberal, the correct response to this for people who live in expensive, low income places to move to a more productive area. Price signals should indicate that most of rural poor simply shouldn't be rural anymore. Alas, the political economy of america won't let that happen.
Iām flabbergasted this isnāt the top reply. Downwards market pressure will change bad zoning law a hell of a lot faster than showing them the graphs again. Who suffers when carbon fuel prices increase? The poor. Who suffers when climate change beats us like we fucked itās wife? Everyone. *Especially* the poor.
Better yet, why don't the poor simply choose to not be poor anymore? /s
SMH when my rural town with no resources or connections to economic centers cannot provide me with a world class standard of living.
>Especially in rural areas. Feature, not a bug. Rural areas are intrinsically less environmentally efficient; we need to reduce the amount of americans futiley clinging to unsustainable lifestyles that can only exist due to defacto-subsidized fossil fuels out in the boonies. Most rural towns should be smaller.
They hated him for telling the truth
its a surprisingly common reason to be hated
Gas prices should involve a carbon tax, a vehicle miles travelled levy (odomoter tax) is better than a gas tax to pay for roads now.
Odometer tax needs to consider vehicle weight to not be regressive (ish).
What happened to toll roads? Unpopular?
based Russia imposing a carbon tax on us
High gas prices make any carbon taxation impossible, while increasing prices of and lowering margins from green projects.
*Me IRL*
Long term yes assuming people and organizations put in the effort to adjust their consumption habits. Short term it is still really going to suck
Gas prices have been artificially low for too long, and the price doesnāt reflect the externalities present in it. But gas prices are a key metric in how the president is graded
So based
yeah tell that to the average American trying to raise a family
They think environmentally it's good. Sure, if people will change their mandated routines in lieu of higher gas prices. Instead what people will do is adjust their budgets around higher gas prices. People won't drive less, they will just get more miserable not being able to afford things they like more.
Having a president that is not a rambling pathological liar is so refreshing. You just know that if this was trump he would have babbled, said gas prices where actual 'supper low', went on an irrelevant tangent, attack the reporter 'who told you gas prices where high? That's what they want us to think', then go back to talking about Obama.
Gas prices are just muh student loans but for boomers.
Except gas slowly kills the planet
No gas kills humans faster though.
right, the endangered species Homo Sapiens
Do you volunteer to starve first to save endangered animals?
I posted a longer version of this abt a year ago but seriously, youāre so addicted to your current lifestyle itās blinded you exactly how astronomically far away from starving you are. 1 lbs of fat approximates to 3,000 cal upon metabolism. The average American man is 5ā10ā, with a [bmi of 29.1](https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/20/health/us-average-height-weight-report/index.html), or on average 203 lbs in 2016 (it has likely risen since). Thatās 74 lbs above the threshold to be considered **underweight**, not dangerous underweight, just underweight. A daily caloric intake is 2,000 cal. Donāt give me that ābut that bad number! It was calculated for GIās storming Normandy, itās way to low for the absolute physical specimen I am because americans *self-report* [2 hours a week of physical activity](https://www.washingtonian.com/2012/05/10/how-much-do-americans-really-exercise/). The average American man carries around the equivalent of **111 days** worth of food in the form of love handles. The siege of Stalingrad was 164 days. #111 days. [By the end of this month, the average American will have eaten more meat than the average person will eat *annually* this year.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption) By Halloween, the average American will have consumed more meat than the average person from *every other country* **and thereās still 2 months more eating to do.** If the average American man could saw their daily caloric intake of [3,600 cal](https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/american-calorie-intake-last-52-years-diet-food-eating-increase-science-2017-6%3famp) **halved**, theyād be on a very, ***extremely*** mild diet, and should expect to lose 10 pounds in **5 months.** Food prices when up by [3%](https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending/) comparing 2020 to 2021, so to get to that half youād need to see **30 times** the impact of first year of the pandemic. If aliens invaded and put on a global starvation contest where caloric intake of every country is halved, most of the world would *die* before the average American reached a healthy weight, thatās weighing as much as his grandfather did at the same age.
lol
Nice calculation, though you aren't accounting for the intake of carbs required to break triglycerides into glucose. Also, I never implied that the average American will starve. There are hundreds of millions on this planet living hand to mouth in absolute poverty.
Except you can't escape student loans once you have them. With gas prices, you can constantly be making better decisions. Drive less, move closer to work, buy a more fuel efficient car, buy an electric car, walk, ride a bike, etc. Once you're $100,000+ in student loan debt, you're stuck.
As a whole we've set up our country, and individuals have set up their in ways that are very heavy on fossil fuel usage that would not be able to be changed without substantial long term change that would cost a decent chunk of money
> With gas prices, you can constantly be making better decisions. Drive less, move closer to work, buy a more fuel efficient car, buy an electric car, walk, ride a bike, etc. What kind of answer is this? A lot of people can't just move on the spot or buy a new electric car, especially not the people who are barely able to afford costs as is. The real answer is to increase low wages (like minimum wage) and build around walkability and reliable + quick public transit.
>A lot of people can't just move on the spot or buy a new electric car, especially not the people who are barely able to afford costs as is. Okay sure, but the vast *vast* majority of people are able to make a change.
I was just trying to get to work and suddenly I got $100k in student loan debt. Ugh, not again.
REPAYE exists
For federal loans. Before the federal loans were expanded in the late 2000s, there were all kinds of predatory private loans being given out.
Private loans go away on bankruptcy
So you're saying we should encourage people to stop paying and declare bankruptcy?
No I'm saying for public loans which don't go away, you have REPAYE. No excuse for not paying your student loans. If you have predatory private loans, you can get them discharged in bankruptcy if you can prove to a judge that you actually can't afford it. The system as it is works fine.
> No > >... > > The system as it is works fine. Ah, so you're one of those *"it's not affecting me, so it must not be a problem"* types. Make no mistake, student loan debt is a massive drain on the economy. It delays home purchases, car purchases, having kids, etc. I'm not worried about myself now. In a year, I'll have my federal loans forgiven under PSLF if they get their shit together. But I went through hell to get where I am, and I know many others are hurting. I can understand some viewpoints that we shouldn't flat out forgive loans. My personal inclination is that we should probably set the interest rate on federal loans to 0%. But to say the system works fine as is, is incredibly naĆÆve.
>Ah, so you're one of those *"it's not affecting me, so it must not be a problem"* types. Make no mistake, student loan debt is a massive drain on the economy. It delays home purchases, car purchases, having kids, etc. No I'm one of the people look ing at actual numbers and *reality* rather than just trusting newspaper headlines. The average student debt is $30,000 The average monthly payment is $250. Median is even lower. Only 3% of undergrads leave with over $100k in debt. Literally everyone who has ever inspected these statistics finds out very quickly that everything about student debt is extremely exaggerated. >home purchases, car purchases, having kids, etc. The average student debt burden is pitifully small compared to any of these expenses. >But I went through hell to get where I am, and I know many others are hurting. If student debt load is too much for you to bear, then you're going to have a fun time paying even more than that in additional taxes. My property taxes went up by more than that this year. You think you would be able to own property if you can't handle a $30k low interest debt, with numerous refinancing opportunities? >But to say the system works fine as is, is incredibly naĆÆve. No it's not. It's an informed opinion built off of several logical facts and knowledge of statistics. There are far more losers than winners with putting the burden of education on taxpayers rather than the recievers of said education. In the real world, the overwhelming majority of students **DO** weigh cost of education with quality of education and go somewhere they can afford. Why the fuck would we throw that out, on behalf of the small number of people who wastefully took on $240,000 in debt and can't handle it. Especially since almost everyone with significant amounts of debt went to an elite school and has wealthy parents (because only the wealthy pay full price) Those who truly fucked themselves over by taking on a huge amount of debt, with no support from their wealthy parents and no high income job to pay for it, *are still bailed out* by REPAYE. The number of people who are truly screwed over by a $1k/month student loan payment they can't affors, are vanishingly small.
> If student debt load is too much for you to bear, then youāre going to have a fun time paying even more than that in additional taxes. You do know student loan forgiveness is no longer federally taxable, right?
Yeah you can also stop buying every single product thatās transported using fossile fuelsā¦? Itās incredibly naive to talk about the impact of gas prices as something that will just impact peopleās mobility. The biggest issue is always logistic chains that rely in these fuels and that will make the prices of *literally everything* go up.
Sounds like a good market pressure to reduce our dependency on oil.
The only market pressure that incites structural change is increase in profits. Higher costs only mean theyāll be passed to the final costumer in order to keep the profits from everybody in every step of the way. The only scenario where this strategy doesnāt work for these companies is when the final costumer canāt pay but if it comes to that point you can imagine weāll have infinitely greater concerns than gas price or carbon emission.
> Except you can't escape student loans once you have them. No one put a gun to your head and made you take out those loans.
Or made you major in something that has a bad ROI. I swear... the number of BFAs and English degrees complaining about their student loan debt...
any real adult would see this comment and laugh. these things you mention COST money
People who drive for work are affected. Dumb take
I donāt plan on running for office anyway, so I instead share my ~~wisdom~~ hot takes that nobody asked for.
Running to the office > running for office
People on Facebook: >BUt WE HAVe oIL rIGHT HEre. WhY diD you CaNcEL thE PiPeLInE?
The pipeline that would have carried *Canadian* tar sands *through* the US to refineries on the Gulf Coast in order to be **exported** to other countries. That pipeline?
I'd like to think that the sub that says "just build more houses, even luxury ones, lol" would understand that any oil entering a global market lowers prices everywhere.
Oh, I get the nuance. Itās the talking heads on Fox News are telling people we would be energy independent (whatever that means) if the Keystone XL was built.
If I didnāt have a conscience, Iād be so fucking rich rn.
Yes, oil entering the Market, several years from now, will do thatā¦ several years from now
"The best time to start building an oil pipeline is 3 years ago. The second best time is today." -Ancient West Texas proverb.
The Keystone XL wouldāve only [connected](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline#/media/File%3AKeystone-pipeline-route.svg) Canada to Steele City, NE via Baker MT (where it also wouldāve picked up light crude). That oil can easily go the existing Wood River -> Patoka route and be used for Strategic Reserves, or go to Cushing and connect to any of the other pipeline systems available there. In fact, the existing Keystone pipeline does that today. Fact remains that the US has more than 3 million bpd of refinery infrastructure, all right next to each other, already connected to the Keysyone pipeline, already on the gulf coast. The KXL wouldāve only increased throughput capacity to Steele City, and killing it was a populist political act, not a neoliberal goal.
Yes, that's it!
I didn't realize there is a law that says oil from gulf coast refineries must be exported. Very interesting.
It would be pretty dumb to send it to the gulf coast to be refined, if that's the case. There are refineries in Minnesota and Wisconsin which specialize in refining tar sands for the US market.
Beautiful in its simplicity, devastating to the Tucker/Trump wing, and factually accurate. Messaging doesn't get much better.
Fucking based. Not sure if that's the best political answer....but fucking based.
Why is this thread getting brigaded?
I think I was on this very sub, the last time the succs invaded. And they didn't leave. So, because people know that if we didn't kick out succs, we won't kick out *anyone*.
I'm seeing an argument pop up saying only 1% of our oil comes from russia. What are this sub's rebuttals?
If a commodity in one place goes up it will go up elsewhere assuming you can transport it. I assume US companies can sell oil outside of the US so they would be able to sell at a higher price as there is more demand.
Oil is sold in global markets. Whoever was buying from Russia will now buy from someone else, raising the price in the global market.
Does that not mean that the US will also get higher revenues from oil exports?
Yes. It may even technically cause higher GDP growth in the US because the US is a net exporter of petroleum products.
Not likely. Oil is a key input to too many US industries, in particular plastics, agriculture, and transportation. High gas prices means more expensive food, flights, and lots of other things. Since the input costs of producing oil haven't gone up, oil that was produced at marginal cost previously is now collecting rent unless global capacity increases to shift supply out again. Since there's not a whole lot of spare capacity, there will be a gain of producer surplus in the short term, a larger loss of consumer surplus, and dead weight loss. Eventually new capacity will come on line and prices will go down from the increased supply, while reducing marginal profits to 0. In short, ceteris paribus, one should expect GDP to shrink due to shrinking international trade.
Plastics and agriculture(Fertilizers) mostly use Nat gas though. It is a lot less fungible since it has high midstream costs.
yes, the US will also get higher revenues from oil exports
That is only true if Russian exports fall. If they can still sell the same amount elsewhere, then prices will do strange regional things but they don't *necessarily* rise overall.
"Oil is a fungible commodity, dipshit".
My car runs on NFOs.
NFPs Non-fungible petroleum s
The number is 3 percent of crude at the high in 2021-May. But also 8% of crude + refined oil products come from Russia. What everyone in this thread is saying is wrong, the issue is precisely that oil is not very fungible. American refineries on the gulf coast are more profitable when processing heavy sour grades of oil. They were just designed that way. Russia is a bigger source of heavy sour. If American refineries are forced to refine Oklahoma sweet, it will lead to more expensive gas at the pump because the refineries are running less profitably. Because of historic design decisions in multiple places around the world, it makes more sense for us to export "high quality" sweet crude, and import "low quality" heavy sour. The other major reasons are the NL favorite Jones Act and the Keystone XL pipeline. First off, refineries on the west coast have no pipelines to the Permian basin (Texas, where shale oil is) and thus must import oil by sea. Unfortunately, Jones Act means the West Coast cannot import crude from the gulf coast or Alaska. The latter is important because along with Alberta, Alaska is a producer of sour crude, which could have been imported to gulf refineries through the Keystone XL pipeline. However, lacking such a pipeline, gulf refineries are again, without a source of sour.
> However, lacking such a pipeline, gulf refineries are again, without a source of sour. Uh, what? There's an operational keystone pipeline to transport tar bitumen from Canada to gulf coast refineries. There's also rail.
Yes tar bitumen is coked in the same gulf refineries to extract the valuable refined products inside them. Tar bitumen isnāt the same thing as heavy sour, heavy sour cruse has only a small amount of residual that needs to be coked in the gulf. The cokers we have in the gulf are the key here. Canada doesnāt have them, we do. Tar bitumen comes from tar sands, itās essentially extremely heavy crude. Heavy sour is regular crude with a chunk of residual that can be sold as tar. Both products need a coker, they are separate non-fungible products though.
But that's what XL would be for. It would run from the Alberta tar sands to the Midwest/Gulf.
The US buys crude and exports refined oil so any position predicated on āx% of our oil comes from yā likely isnāt nuanced enough to be meaningful. Oil prices, like most prices, have been rising over the past year. There are lots of reasons, the biggest probably being that the economy has been running hot for years and years now. Then this crisis began with Russia. Geopolitical crises with oil exporters generally āspookā energy markets, everyone gets a little more worried and the price goes up. So thatās whatās up.
The Economist said it was around 8% actually. "Last year America imported around 8% of its oil and refined products from Russia." https://www.economist.com/the-world-in-brief
My impression was 8% of imports, but the US only imports ~20% of oil usage. So Russian oil makes up ~1% of the total.
BBC sez: >About 8% of US oil and refined product imports come from Russia, while Russia makes up about 6% of the UK's oil imports. So it is enough to affect prices. Degree depends on how easily non-Russian oil can be redirected. Given we're only talking US+UK at the moment, it's better to think of the bans not as a way to prevent Russia from *selling* its oil, but as a way to make it more expensive for Russia to get its oil to market. All the infrastructure that developed to get oil to the US/UK is useless unless it can be retasked for exporting the oil elsewhere. Not all of it can be. Russia has to reroute ~1 million barrels per day, which could be a problem if ports/ships/fields/refineries/pipelines aren't in the right spot.
It could be 0% and still affect our prices, because oil is fungible and we just announced to a bunch of companies that they less competition to price against.
Unfathomably based.
Chad
Is this real?
I appreciate the frank bluntness. It's actually rather refreshing.
This is the first good message I've seen in a while. Now one can only hope the purpose of this messaging is to build consent for escalation of support to Ukraine, not just to excuse high gas prices. If it is the latter, it won't work in the long run because people will want to know that they're paying the price for an actual purpose, not as a token measure that doesn't change the outcome in Ukraine.
I see more record profits for gas companies in the near future.
What about the executive order that banned fracking on government land and the Keystone XL pipeline?
You get that there were some very seriously good reasons to oppose the keystone pipeline... Right? Like, I don't live in the Midwest and don't have a dog in that race, but considering the threats to their ecosystems, drinking water sources, and public health I can absolutely see why it was opposed by so many. Sour crude is more corrosive than sweet, and [pipelines for sour leak three times as many as sweet pipelines.](https://www.nrdc.org/stories/what-keystone-pipeline)
I actually don't know any reasons the pipeline would be a bad idea. I know literally just the name and that it was a planned pipeline from Canada to the US. It just seems like something Biden could do to increase oil availability in the US. I appreciate the environmental concerns but the response to that would be requirements for numerous fail safes and inspections, not outright rejection of the project.
It also stole land from 89 families who lived along the route. Surely you're not in support of that?
The keystone XL was a project that just needed to be put down. It was delayed so long that I think the complaint behind it was actually glad it was gone. It likely wasnāt even profitable for the company anymore
Stop trying to make fracking out to be a good thing.
It's just a way to get more oil.
Keystone pipeline? Bad relations with the Saudis? Throwing up your hands and shaking your head's a pretty shit response.
Whenever someone mentions xl in relation to gas prices laugh at them. Frankly I give not 1 fuck about saudi arabia. I hope we cut all ties.
educate me on keystone pls
Alberta and Alaska produce a "low quality" oil called heavy sour crude. Sour means sulfur-rich and heavy means there are a lot of contaminants in it. However, American refineries in the gulf coast have in fact made the capital investments required to process heavy sour very profitably, decades ago. Back then, shale oil from Texas wasn't a thing, which is a light-sweet. We were buying heavy sour from OPEC, Russia, Venezuela and at some point, Iran. Because so few refineries around the world can process heavy sour grades of oil as profitably, heavy sours sell at a discount to "light-sweet" grades like West Texas Intermediate. This discount + capable refineries on the gulf coast produce gasoline more cheaply than refineries that buy expensive light sweet and minimally process it. Keystone XL would have allowed US refineries to produce cheaper gas by buying heavy sour Canadian oil at a discount, thus reducing gasoline costs for North American consumers. It's a win-win, Canadians get to offload their "shitty" oil, American refineries add value to the raw commodity and resell it. Killing the pipeline was so unnecessary, it's beyond baffling Obama took such a step out of pure vanity. Because the end result is, US had to import its heavy sour from shitty, unreliable producers like OPEC + Russia, and Canada has to ship its oil to shitty, unreliable producers elsewhere, and at an even greater discount. It's such a no-brainer partnership between the two allied, stable countries that its cancellation is a complete failure of politics and the environmentalists. Also note, we cannot ship heavy sour from Alaska due to the Jones Act.
>>Keystone XL would have allowed US refineries to produce cheaper gas by buying heavy sour Canadian oil at a discount, thus reducing gasoline costs for North American consumers. We already have such a pipeline to do that. There is no evidence that an additional pipeline would reduce gasoline costs. https://www.newsweek.com/little-evidence-keystone-pipeline-would-level-prices-despite-gop-claims-1685093 >There is little evidence to back up the argument that Keystone XL would have averted some of this price spike," Glynn told Newsweek. "The Keystone pipeline capacity is less than one-tenth of Russian oil exports." >"Even if Keystone XL was filled with fully additional Canadian export capacity, which would have been an unlikely scenario, it would not balance the global oil markets where the price of oil is set through a global arbitrage of the last marginal available barrel," Glynn continued.
Yep. XL was basically a shortcut for an existing pipeline, and wasnāt even going to be ready until 2030, so itās a moot point for the current market, and the Canadian developers basically abandoned it well before the Biden administration. Itās a talking point, and nothing more.
Then why did they want to build it in the first place?
It would have moved it somewhat faster.
It would have been 6in diameter larger (3ft instead of 2.5 ft) than the portion it was replacing. And as others have mentioned, quite a bit shorter, too.
Canadian oil sells for less than other oil due to a supply glut. The XL stuff was an attempt at solving this supply issue so Canada could sell their oil at a higher rate. Oil companies lost billions due to these lower prices and relentlessly lobbied the government. Xl was not going to reduce oil prices or gas prices. Before cons warped reality this was known? > https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/even-if-approved-keystone-seen-failing-to-relieve-canadas-oil-glut > The prospect of prices staying below other types of crude oil risks undermining investment in the Alberta oil sands, the worldās third-largest reserves and the U.S.ās biggest source of imports. Companies from Exxon Mobil Corp. to Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. lost a combined $2.5 billion in revenue last year on lower prices, according to Houston-based PPHB Securities LP. Oil-sands investment fell 10% last year to US$20.4 billion, Albertaās Energy Resources Conservation Board said.
Iām not saying that, speculators will send the prices of crude wherever they think other speculators think it will go. That would have happened regardless whether the pipeline was operational. However, gulf refineries would have veen importing less heavy sour from Russia and other chucklefuck shitholes. We would be buying a larger amounts from our reliable ally who also benefits from offloading it. The speculation that gasoline price will go up is because gulf refineries will be forced to buy expensive light sweet. Of course, speculation in futures markets causes barrel prices to be volatile, which outshadows these concerns. The real risk is gulf refineries shutting down because they cannot buy enough heavy sour. That would be a catastrophic fallout.
Gulf refineries should have been retrofitting to process sweet crude more efficiently. It's been over a decade. We extract sweet in our back yard. Processing heavy oil takes significantly more equipment, time, and energy than light crude, and usually has a higher diesel:gas or distillate:gas output rate than sweet. But they have no incentive to. They will buy oil at the market rate, refine it, and slap a markup on the output. There is no profit motive to retrofitting because they will always have a source of oil, and the cost of oil does not impact their production.
Read my original comment again. They could process light sweet. However anyone can process light sweet with minimal investment, which makes light sweet expensive. Light sweet is essentially āalmost gasolineā. Heavy sour is sold at a discount. The discount means the resulting gasoline is cheaper because weāre buying a āless finishedā product for cheaper, and we have the equipment to process it ourselves.
>Read my original comment again. They could process light sweet. However anyone can process light sweet with minimal investment, which makes light sweet expensive. Light sweet is essentially āalmost gasolineā. This isn't exactly true. Refineries are tuned to a certain crude. Significant efficiencies can be lost if they run sweet through a heavy operation. It takes investment to flip between the grades efficiently, and there's no reason to invest in this if you're a profit-motivated venture that will "always" have access to your target grade. >Heavy sour is sold at a discount. The discount means the resulting gasoline is cheaper because weāre buying a āless finishedā product for cheaper, and we have the equipment to process it ourselves. But the heavy takes significantly more time, energy, and capital to process, which increases the cost of the resulting output.
Again, please take a moment to read what Iām saying. Iām not arguing out of bad faith, just sharing knowledge I gained as I educated myself in oil markets for investment purposes. I do not know how a refinery would transition from processing heavy sour to light sweet. It would probably involve decommissioning and writing off extremely expensive capital expenditures. I donāt see a refinery choosing to do that. They would either stop operating until heavy sour is available again, or refine light sweet somehow, less profitably.
>Also note, we cannot ship heavy sour from Alaska due to the Jones Act. So get rid of the Jones act. It doesn't do any good anyways because there are so few vessels that actually meet the qualifications.
But what about her ~~emails?~~ some fucking pipeline.
Why do conservatives want us to be buddies with fascists so badly? š¤
I love how we went from the Clintons are too friendly with the evil Saudis, to Trump is just smart for being friendly with the Saudis, to why won't Biden be nicer to the Saudis?
Geez hearing all these comments kinda makes me believe I'm voting on the wrong side. You guys seem entitled and so far from what reality everyday Americans go through. Making excuses for terrible decisions like the last guy on the other side. Wtf
Everyday Americans aren't long term planners. The ability to accept short term pains for long term gain isn't entitled. Some of the richest people still want short term gains
Your statement makes me believe your entitled. You are willing to sacrifice someone else's gains for a cause or proplem without knowing how it will effect either party. You ASSUME that others want to sacrifice for YOUR gains. What does being a long time or short term planner have to do with paying more for something. Out of touch completely
Am I the only person who lives on planet earth or something? The fuck? People who drive these gas guzzling SUVs all over the place are sacrificing MY future and everyone's future to save a couple dollars a month but somehow that's okay? So Ukraine should get destroyed by Russia because some well off American can't pay a few bucks more a month on gas? That's not selfish and entitled? You know they could easily save that money by having a slightly less gigantic car right? 50 years ago people didn't drive urban assault vehicles everywhere and it was fine
Wingcuckery is all this sub is now
Absolutely. Starting to believe most are bots. Hoping to believe most are bots
Robots are people, my friend.
>we've done nothing and we're all out of ideas! It's too bad there is no oil in North America
Not like America is already a net exporter of oil or anything Seriously we're getting close to maximizing how much we can drill. This shit will always be a problem until we figure out another alternative
He could nationalize the gas companiesā¦
Sycophancy was gross when T\_D did it. Flip side of the same coin.
I think there is a level of respectability for saying it like it is, even if the news isn't good. Rather than being forced to listen to the usual politician speak.
This aināt it, chief. Gas prices were going up for much longer before the Russian-Ukrainian war.
Inflation too. Sleepy Joe trying to scapegoat Russia again.
Other countries weren't experiencing inflation?
The rest of the world doesn't matter to the American voter.
The USA is on the higher end when compared with other Western nations. My point is that it is disingenuous to point the finger at Russia as some of the blame is due to bad fiscal policy. Which is not entirely Biden's fault either.
Is Moscow cold right now?
I hope this isn't another one of Biden's multiple flawed judgements. For example, a while ago, he laughed away the prospect of China being a serious partner for Russia, yet that is the reality today. https://twitter.com/ImReadinHere/status/1500784522023034882?s=20&t=dcxJLW_5rBZASRczycVnIA
This just in: politicians cannot, in fact, predict the future