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Comment by izend | Hacker News Reader

It is amazing that around 2007 the US had declining oil production, an oil price shock and peak oil scare which probably were the primary reasons for the invasion of Iraq and terrible ethanol and biofuel policies. Now, there is talk of the US not requiring any imported oil by 2025 (not sure if that counts imports from the biggest supplier Canada), how times change due to a technological advancement in drilling practices.

I believe US foreign policy will potentially have very large changes due to their new found energy independence.

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Credit where credit is due: It was because of the Bush administration’s policies around the strategic reserve and opening drilling that got us off of our dependence on middle eastern oil. I’m no fan of the Bush admin, but this is one of the few things they probably got right.

Except for the irreparable environmental impact of it all...

Certainly true, but more complex than it may seem. How much environmental damage has been saved by not having to ship oil from the middle east and not propping up those countries and all of the environmental damage they do? I don't think it's possible to know.

Meh, I'd rather keep ours in the ground and be the last to run out. Maybe that's a selfish and defeatist mindset, but it's another way to look at things besides just "lets not ruin our own environment".

"Last to run out" makes it sound like oil will be increasingly valuable as time goes on. What if you leave yours in the ground, and eventually it is worth almost nothing, because the world has moved on?

Oil has much greater economic value when used as a feedstock for non-fuel purposes. It is almost certainly a better idea to let any reserves you possibly can stay in the ground for as long as possible, and let everyone else sell theirs for cheap first.

But if 90% of the demand for oil (transportation) disappears and supply stays the same, the price is going to drop big time.

If demand dropped, initially supply would drop offline as prices could no longer support the more difficult wells rather quickly. And as actual production falls, the amount charged that the market could bear (if the market was mostly the non-fuel, high-value uses) could be significantly higher than what we see today. A scary time to be an investor in an oil company, absolutely. But taken in the broad view, leaving oil for later will almost certainly enhance total future potential profits, if not the rate of profit per unit time.

Good, that's even better.

This is assuming oil is still valuable in the future in the face of increasing pollution standards, potential carbon taxes, and the rise of cheaper renewable energy production.

Oil will be a valuable feedstock for the forseeable future. Look at all the plastic in your house, in your clothes, in your car, wrapping your food, coating your circuit boards, the list goes on. Yeah, that's oil. Shame we can't harvest the plastic from the oceans and reformulate it into something useful.

Why not?

I haven't run the numbers, but seriously doubt it is economically viable. Most of the ocean plastic is small particles and it'd have to be collected, filtered and dried first.

Those first two can be done passively, or on the go with solar power.

Diesel and jet fuel by themselves account for over 30% of global oil consumption. Even if we get all other vehicles running on something else (ha), big trucks, freight planes and air travel will be guzzling oil for probably as long as we still have some left.

But oil products can be produced from biomass and energy too. And is carbon neutral, and doesn't have the potential side effects of extraction leaks and fracking concerns.

Oil isn't magic, it is straight up organic buildup put under heat and/or pressure. You can make 'fossil fuels' out of trees, grass, frogs, people, ect. It is just limited by our ability to produce energy which is currently our biggest restriction on pretty much every industry in the world and is what we are most concerned about solving.

Could you elaborate? As far as I understand it, the primary drivers by far were technological advancements in fracking and horizontal drilling. These technologies initially led to the gas boom and then later leveraged for oil.

I would say Obama's EPA standards on cars had a bigger impact than what you described, with the added benefit of being a move in efficiency and not just burning through reserves.

"Credit where credit is due"

How many people die of cancer in the US due to massive pollution brought on by "policies"? 10k, 100k, 1M?

And how long will it take the US courts to find the CO2 producers guilty, same as they did with tobacco?

All big oil producers are on ultra shaky ground due to future settlements and fines.

"The ultimate irony is that what created the U.S. energy revolution—nimble, private-sector companies using new technologies to extract previously untapped crude—keeps the United States from wielding its energy strength in the way that Saudi Arabia, Russia, and other big producers with state-owned firms willing to put geopolitics above profits do."

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/14/why-american-oil-hasnt-...

The US has other more conventional levers of international power to wield. Taking oil off the table is a win for the US.

A huge part is not about energy. As the American Chemistry Council are delighted to tell, $200bn has been invested since 2010 in increased production from fracking for ethane and other products for plastics and chemicals[0].

Yet they still find it necessary to campaign against chemical regulations and restrictions on plastic carrier bags.

So we're still accelerating nicely towards that precipice.

[0] https://www.americanchemistry.com/Media/PressReleasesTranscr...

> I believe US foreign policy will potentially have very large changes due to their new found energy independence.

Yup, that was the one of the main reasons we bore the cost of being the world's policeman and securing global shipping routes. We're going to largely stop doing that, and turn inward, leaving the rest of the world to scramble over how to secure shipping routes on their own resulting in new alliances. The oil will start flowing to China mostly and Russia will expand its borders by force. China will be too busy trying to stop its fake economy from crashing to care.

Don't forget political will to disregard the consequences and externalities of such drilling practices.

Re: externalities

Check out what fracking has done to Pennsylvania's formerly wild forests compared to New York; there is a hideously ugly network of access roads and cut clearings for fracking wells .

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9889724,-78.7814974,8036m/da...

My friend pointed this out to me and I was truly disgusted...

Well, it could be worse as seen in such "formerly wild forests" of New York.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Manhattan,+New+York,+NY,+U...

Disgusted by some roads?

Same with all of british columbia, logging roads everywhere

At least that's for logging and not fracking. Logging sequesters millions of cubic meters of carbon (trees), and the BC forest license program requires audited 3rd party replanting, ensuring continuously increasing sequestration.

Even the amount of carbon sequestered in wooden telephone poles across North America is staggering, let alone houses and other structures.

Here's the same place, just zoomed out a little: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9889724,-78.7814974,128506m/...

Pretty much everything that's light green on that map is forest that was cleared for farmland. By 1872, the eastern states had cleared 52% of their forests, mostly for agriculture. Habitat destruction is an underappreciated problem, but let's keep things in perspective. Those dirt access roads are narrow strips of forest, and they'll be quickly overgrown once they're abandoned.

When did America invade Iraq post 2007?

> how times change due to a technological advancement in drilling practices.

Is it really just that or maybe also the erosion of environmental protections? [0]

[0] https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/id/10665.pdf

> I believe US foreign policy will potentially have very large changes due to their new found energy independence.

It's possible but I think corporate interests, rather than our energy independence, will be the driving force of US foreign policy as it had been in the past. As long as banks, oil companies, etc stand to make a lot of money in the middle east, our foreign policy won't change much.

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