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Comment by moralestapia | Hacker News Reader

People who make a big fuzz about this haven't truly done the math on the scale of it vs. the US dollar worldwide.

Saudi Arabia oil exports are 200B USD/year, give or take. The world has a GDP of ~100T USD, how much of that is traded in US dollars? We could put an estimate based on total currency reserves, of which USD is about half of that. 200B out of 50T is "merely" 0.05% ...

Sure, they may be one of the single major traders of USD, but at 0.05% what this tells you is that the USD is extremely diversified, and that's good!

(Also, this is implying Saudi Arabia bins the whole deal overnight, which is very unlikely to happen)

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Oil, as any energy, has multiplier effects. That 200B USD is responsible for major part of the 100T USD.

> That 200B USD is responsible for major part of the 100T USD

We are the world’s largest oil producer [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_pro...

We don't (net) sell it. In fact we don't sell very much the world wants

> We don't (net) sell it

We export a metric fuck tonne of it; half as much as Saudi Arabia [1].

> we don't sell very much the world wants

We’re the world’s second-largest exporter [2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_exp...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_exports

Geez.

US oil is fracked, which means that to get out of the microscopic fissures in the rocks only the lighter stuff comes out.

This makes excellent gasoline. By the way, this is also why we've become a CH4 power house.

Unfortunately, the US runs on diesel. We don't produce much heavy oil so we import it.

net it basically cancels out depending on interest rates, price of oil and who's in charge in DC.

Fracking, anyway, is an economic mirage enabled by cheap credit and expensive oil. Fracking sucks because the wells don't produce much.

> US oil is fracked

About two thirds [1].

> the US runs on diesel. We don't produce much heavy oil so we import it

Diesel is a medium-weight distillate; we can turn light oil into it fine. We refine most of our diesel and import the balance from Canada [2].

> Fracking, anyway, is an economic mirage enabled by cheap credit and expensive oil

Our production costs mirror Russia’s [3][4]. (They’re dwarfed by Saudi Arabia’s fiscal break even.)

Consider citing your comments. I’ve sometimes started writing something as riddled with errors as yours, only to find myself corrected when searching for citations.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=847&t=6

[2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/diesel-fuel/where-our-di...

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/748207/breakeven-prices-...

[4] https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/At-What-Level-Will-Sau...

In terms of total petroleum products (including crude, gasoline, and diesel) the US has become a net exporter in the last few years.

> In 2020, the United States became a net exporter of petroleum for the first time since at least 1949. In 2022, total petroleum exports were about 9.52 million barrels per day (b/d) and total petroleum imports were about 8.33 million b/d, making the United States an annual net total petroleum exporter for the third year in a row.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...

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