Take note how I didn't say "change quotas". I said ramp production. It takes OPEC 6 months to a year to ramp up production after they change quotas, and they generally have easier to access reserves.

Oil companies are explicitly making the decision not to invest in drilling because they don't think it will be profiable in the very long term. That's not my words. That's their own claims on what they are doing. They would rather return dividends to the investors than increase production even when oil prices are incredibly high.

18 months after the acute, "no other option than lockdowns"-phase of the pandemic was over, production should be ramping up again, even if US reserves take longer to get online than those in the ME.


And that's the fucking point: fossils will not be profitable in the long run because of the climate agenda, which is a political decision, not a technological necessity.

Mass production of solar panels and huge ass batteries for all the electric cars require a fuckton of rare earths, e.g. cobalt or lithium. Yes, renewable energy will continue to become cheaper due to economy of scale for some years, but they will neither become infinitely cheap, nor will they continuously get cheaper. At some point, increased global demand for rare earths will cause their price to go up again. In some places, fossils are more easily accessible and probably also cheaper than renewables due to geographic reasons, for example Russia where it's dark and cold for half the year and all the oil and natural gas is lying right under the surface. Or China and Australia with their abundant coal deposits. Even in a future where solar panels and wind energy have become very cheap, fossils will still outcompete them in such places. And that's not even talking about the problem of reliability and long-term storage. As of today, we have no idea how to bridge a lengthy period of cloudy and windless weather on a fully-renewable energy grid - fossil power plants are still needed as a backup.

Long story short, even with renewable energy becoming super cheap, the global energy mix (primary energy, not just electricity!) would still contain some 20-50% fossils if political leaders weren't worried about climate change and prioritizing a swift decarbonization over going with the most cost-efficient energy mix. Simply put, the decision makers at oil companies aren't pessimistic about the long-term profitability of their drilling because solar panels would make it obsolete, they are pessimistic because of the tremendous political risk that the green agenda poses to their business model. Also note that the climate activists and leading voices within the political sphere (including the Biden admin) are not calling for us to wait until renewables are cheaper than fossils and supplant them organically via market mechanisms, no, they are explicitly calling on political action to artificially speed this process of energy transition up, beyond the rate that a free market would produce.



There is a case to be made that these decisions are nonetheless the correct ones, that that's a price worth paying - but please don't deny the obvious. Of course this attempt at an ASAP-decarbonization comes with costs; of course it requires political intervention which actively and artificially kills off the business of the oil and gas companies ahead of time.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on May 24 2022 10:51pm

True ? Really ?

Triggered by meme in meme thread.

Nuf said

Dude, there is no free market on energy. We've been subsidizing the shit out of oil exploration for longer than either of us have been alive. Gas is still subsidized in the U.S. to keep pump prices down.

If it were up to the free market renewables would have been cheaper a decade ago instead of just a couple years. At least learn the basics. It helps you not look like a dumb shit.

We aren't even upgrading our grid for electric car loads. We aren't mandating electric. We arent deploying mass battery packs that will realistically sustain us and that isn't even feasible. We aren't even getting rid of franking. Hell, even in places welll suited for wind states are still fighting wind farms tooth and nail.

We aren't making real efforts to be totally carbon free outside of a few Nordic countries that are uniquely suited for it. We have another strong 50 years of reliance on fossil fuels at minimum because we aren't taking the steps to be rid of them in 15 years. The slow economic path over 50+ years is literally the path we are on now.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on May 25 2022 01:03am

the lifelong subsidy leech who couldnt hack it in med school after bragging to everyone about applying to med school calling anyone else “dumb shit”



e: inb4 that user’s typical repressed frustrated homophobic retort

This post was edited by excellence on May 25 2022 06:34am

Thinking that someone saying your meme is shitty must be "tRiGgErEd" is no way to go through life, son.

Why do you think countries have been subsidizing oil exploration for something like a century? Because all governments all around the globe have been in the pocket of the oil industry for this long? Or could it be that oil - or, more broadly speaking, cheap energy - is the lubricant of modern society and an indispensable basis for all our wealth? Simply put, oil extraction was publicly subsidized because it was worth it.


Also, at least here in Germany/Europe, we are subsidizing the everliving shit out of renewables. Maybe that's where the disconnect in our communication lies on this issue:

Here in Germany, governments are subsidizing renewables a lot - grants for those who want to buy solar panels for private use, fixed prices for any electricity fed into the grid from renewables (which are making electricity costs sky high here in Germany), investment into the recharging infrastructure for EVs, huge subsidies for the buyers of EVs, the government forcing wind parks all over the place, even right in front of villages and towns. This course has given my country the highest electricity and some of the highest gas prices in the world. And funnily enough, it has increased our dependence on natural gas from Russia because all the renewable energy is neither reliable nor storable, so that we need high capacities of fossil backup power plants which step in when its windless during nighttime or cloudy days. On the EU level, the EU Commission has concrete plans to outright disallow the sale of cars with combustion engines as soon as it possibly can, it tries to coerce all European countries into phasing out coal by 2030, and so on and forth.



And now comes the punch line: the Biden admin is committed to the same agenda. Not only are "climate-conscious" voices widespread in his administration, but he also publicly pledged to adhere to the Paris Climate Agreement, which will inevitably require similar policies and more. What I just described to you is the future that Democrats, liberals and climate activists want (at a minimum) for the US. Yes, Americans generally give less of a fuck about the climate and yes, your political gridlock and the strong autonomy of red states have prevented your federal government from implementing the same degree of decarbonization policies, but that doesn't change the long-term outlook. One of the major parties in America, the vast majority of the mainstream media, pretty much all of academia and all of the cultural elites are committed to the green agenda. On top, there has been a shift of power within corporate America, from oil companies toward tech companies, before climate change even became an issue in the public mind.

The leaders of oil and gas companies can see which way the wind is blowing - domestically and globally - and act accordingly.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on May 25 2022 11:42am