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Comment by megamike | Hacker News Reader

HA this is mostly blustering Russia has gas and oil which we (and ESPECIALLY Europe) want

One of the benefits of propping up evil regimes in the middle east is that they can step in should one of their competitors attempt cause supply disruptions.

So if you've ever wonder why we let SA get away with <terrible deed>. This right here is the reason.

Politics is a dirty business.

By “we” I assume you mean the USA. Which is a net exporter of oil and the largest oil producer as of 2021. It also receives almost no imports from Russia, and will increase exports to EU at current high prices. Russian oil restriction plays to US energy strengths but the US won’t move unilaterally without EU support due to their dependence.

The US is no longer a net exporter: https://www.foxbusiness.com/energy/us-energy-independence-on...

Looks like they were predicting that in the beginning of 2021, though for 1H2021, US was still a net exporter. Don’t think they will be for 2022.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49596

Exporting oil out of USA = higher prices domestically. Voters feeling economic pressure = political nightmare for the party "in power".

Heh, maybe today was a Putin move to further destroy US politics. Here comes Trump 2024? He'd refuse NATO deployment and the Baltic states or more could be Russian by mid 2025...

USA imported slightly more oil from Russia than it did Saudi Arabia in 2020 as an example.

USA can roughly export 3000kbd oil. It already exports 2.5-3.0mn daily during any given month. It does not have massively more export capacity than that.

USA SPR is large (600mn) but has very limited ability to get that oil into even the domestic market. The internal infrastructure is already occupied by moving the oil now that was released during the late 2021 SPR release. There is only perhaps 150kbd incremental oil it can put on to the market.

A reliance on a fuel type we are already trying to get rid of, this will hasten that.

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