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Comment by dorfsmay | Hacker News Reader

II don't know the details so my example might not make sense, but two factors are:

Shipping: no easy to ship from producing site to say NE coast, so they might buy from Sweden and Saudi Arabia, while producer, say in Texas might have a pipeline to the west coast and export to China.

Price/contracts: some large buyer (say refineries) buy on long term contracts and might still buy at prices negotiated when the US had policies restricting domestic production. Also, not everybody sells at market price, so you could buy foreign for cheaper than what's currently available domestically.

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I used to watch Irving Oil’s ships come into their Chelsea, MA terminal on a regular basis, and just assumed that they were bringing something in from maritime Canada because it was closer/cheaper. The Boston metroplex is also served by a number of pipelines that reach New England, which I suspect also makes product from the other end of the pipes cheaper here.

I would strongly recommend not attempting to contract for or ship oil extracted in Sweden to the USA, or to anywhere else in the world. Unless you premise this on holding that Norway should never have gotten its independence 100+ years ago.

What is your motivation for this?

Are you asserting that buying oil from Sweden will somehow reverse Norway's independence?

Or that we should punish Sweden for having had the union with Norway?

Seems a long grudge to carry for a hundred-year-old "amicable and peaceful dissolution" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_between_Sweden_and_Norwa...

Like recommending the US should not have helped England in WW 1 because of the war of 1812.

Sweden is not an oil producer.

While Sweden has no oil production, they do export refined oil products.

Indeed that's the point, not being a producer of oil by extraction.

What's your point? You've made three comments, and I still can't tell what your point is. What does "not being a producer of oil by extraction" have to do with Norway's independence from Sweden?

The point is a mix of mineral and monarchical accuracy.

Norway is a significant oil producer and exporter, worthy of mention together with Saudi Arabia in the context of discussing oil producers (potentially) exporting crude oil to the US; not Sweden. Norway was in a (forced) union of kingdoms with Sweden until 1906, so someone referring to Sweden as an oil producer may only be somewhat right if 1906 had not happened. hth

So it was a nitpick. Here's another: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Sweden/oil_production/

The U.S. Energy Information Administration says Sweden has produced 8.4 thousand barrels per day since 2010.

Tiny, but non-zero (they remain heavily reliant on oil imports from Russia).

Also, Lundin Petroleum is a Swedish oil extraction company, which extracts oil off the Norwegian coast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lundin_Petroleum

And Sweden does have onshore oil deposits that have not been opened for extraction - https://sputniknews.com/business/201703071051330296-sweden-o...

Note that dorfsmay didn't say "oil extracted in Sweden", you added that qualifier yourself. He also indicated his example may be weak on details, whereas you were explicitly striving for accuracy.

I read it more like striving for humor, not accuracy. Humor that would only fly if you knew the bit of history that was later explained.

Isn't that typical of conversations between hackers?

dorfsmay wrote "to ship from producing site" then gave Sweden and Saudi Arabia as example producing sites.

The only operational, limited extraction of oil in Sweden took place in Gotland, until 1993. The remnants of that activity have now become historical markers. The Swedish government agency of statistics reported in 2016 that there is absolutely no production of crude oil in Sweden ("I Sverige sker ingen produktion av råolja."). [1] Who should we trust on this, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or the Swedish government?

Not sure why all of this is so arresting.

[1] https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/artiklar/2016/Rysk-olja-v...

You could just have said "sweden doesnt produce/export oil" instead of all that nonsense ...

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