Monday, June 29, 2015

How Obama Is Killing The Domestic Oil Boom

by JASmius



By his old capitalist friends, supply and demand:

In a field of brittle yellow grass and clotted mud about five miles north of Dickinson, North Dakota, stands a cemetery of sorts. Drilling rigs stretch into the sky like tall skeletons. The occasional lone truck rattles along a dirt road. Otherwise, the location is deserted.

Similar graveyards have been popping up across the western half of the state since the price of oil sharply declined last fall. These once-great moneymakers that drew thousands to the state are now idle, or “stacked,” in the lingo of the oil fields. As more and more companies have stopped drilling following the decline in the price of oil last year, the term has become all too familiar....

But as soon as the price of oil dropped late last year, things began to unravel, and rigs started to close. Of the 192 drilling rigs active in April of 2014, just 94 were open one year later....

Charlie Cogdill, an agent for Halliburton, has been through four oil busts over the course of his career. He describes drilling as “the tip of the spear,” the first part of the industry to be affected by the slowdown. A downturn in oil prices produces a ripple effect that spreads from drilling to fracking, from the workers on the rigs to the small communities where those workers live.

What will happen to those who uprooted themselves and their families to move here? What will happen to the towns that suddenly flourished? What will happen to those who pinned their dreams on the North Dakota oil boom?

Same thing that's happened to every other non-Obamunist American: back to the unemployment line, followed by the welfare rolls, and finally, starvation.  Just as Barack Obama intended.

How has he done this?  Simple - the federal oil export ban, which has never been lifted.  Without foreign markets to which to sell our now-considerable excesses of domestic private petroleum production, the U.S. market became glutted - i,e, too much supply,  When there's too much supply for the existing demand, the price falls, production gets cut back, the boom goes bust, all those (ugh) "greedy and selfish" private sectors jobs disappear, and the Obama Depression is restored in the Flickertail State,

I'm sure it didn't provide The One the sheer visceral satisfaction of signing an Executive Decree banning private fossil fuel production in all fifty States, but it's still gotten the job done,

And not just in the oil industry, either:

The bulls working the rigs were the first to lose their jobs, but the impact has spread like ripples across a pond in a matter of months. Oil field support companies such as Little Dog, LLC, which sells tools, technical equipment and replacement parts to the drillers, have had to get rid of most of their workers. But the effects hit the non-energy sectors across the board with equal vigor. Fast food places were offering well above minimum wage to low skill workers because there just weren’t enough people to fill all the jobs. Now that’s ended. The school system is emptying and the real estate market has plunged as well.

Obamanomics with a capitalist face.  Perhaps his infernal majesty's greatest economic "accomplishment".

Yet,

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