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Comment by ecshafer | Hacker News Reader

The US (with Canada and Mexico) is self-sufficient with fossil fuel energy.

> The US (with Canada and Mexico) is self-sufficient with fossil fuel energy.

Oh boy can't wait for the reenactment of third reich intervening peacefully in czechoslovakia, for their own safety and wellbeing of course, and not at all for the resources they're hoarding, the filthy hoarders.

I do find the slow Sovietization of America funny, both mentally and economically. The year is 2050, autarky on energy has been established, the markets cut off, politics in the hands of erratic and geriatric leaders. Americans proudly drive 30 year old Fords the way people used to drive Ladas, while China exports green energy, cars and infrastructure to the world.

Unfortunately, we share the planet and the atmosphere with it.

If the US taunts someone into a nuclear war, the rest of us get to live but should be investing more in cancer research.

It's awesome the US hasn't destabilized one of those neighbors and alienated the other one by declaring it the prospective 51st state. Soft power really is America's super power.

I’d wager the US is self sufficient also in terms of renewable energies.

But it gets traded globally. That means if the price goes up in Asia, it also goes up in NA.

It doesn't have to be traded globally. The US could ban oil and gas exports, and that would decouple local prices from the global market.

tbh I’m kind of surprised the admin hasn’t enacted export tariffs on oil and gas already to take the pressure off car owners.

Wouldn’t do anything to the prices of imported products since the entire intl supply chain would be subject to even higher prices, but would reduce pressure at the pump

Imports into the US will experience inflation regardless. Semiconductor imports from East Asia are one example, since they depend on helium and energy from the Gulf.

Why the US can't use its own oil: it's the wrong type. https://blog.drillingmaps.com/2025/06/this-is-why-us-cant-us...

Sure, if we build out refining capacity for the next ten years. Then we're golden until we run out of the finite well of combustible dead algae. So if you think we can revitalize American manufacturing and resource processing starting now, and you're okay with those investments being worthless in a few decades, and you don't give a shit about rendering the planet significantly less habitable to human life, then yeah, we're totally self-sufficient with fossil fuels.

Or we could, you know, pull energy out of the air and sun, a strategy which will be viable until our star dies.

Alberta tar sands have hundreds of years worth of reserves. They're also expensive and incredibly dirty to extract and emit significantly more CO2 during processing than a light oil well will. (The tar is usually melted by heating with natural gas).

I'm quite confident cheap renewable alternatives will make the tar sands inviable far before they run out.

Some good news though, with the war in Iran the spiking oil price means that Albertan executives can ramp up operations and stay quite profitable! Push the price to 200/barrel and we'll just strip mine the entire province after airlifting out Calgary and Edmonton.

This assumes that there isn't profound demand destruction caused by the stratospheric energy prices.

Fossil fuels were already an inferior energy source when oil was $60/barrel. Electrification has been moving fast and accelerating, even at the pre-energy crisis prices.

Now? Current events are likely to take fossil fuels out back and give 'em the Old Yeller treatment with surprising speed.

I absolutely agree, _in market driven economies_, fossil fuels are slowly pricing themselves out of relevancy. The issue is that for some reason the US specifically subsidizes their usage keeping them artificially lowly priced.

So, how many billions of newly printed debt is Trump willing to throw at the problem to keep those subsidies up so that he can be sheltered from the scary windmills?

another option is not to shit on all countires who do have resources driving the prices up for everyone.

This is an article about paying private industry to not build wind capacity.

I don't agree with redirecting towards fossil fuels instead of wind power, but its not really paying TotalEnergies "for not building wind capacity", its more like changing what was ordered on behalf of the population: first the wind power capacity was ordered, then it was stalled and blocked, and now this president and TotalEnergies have agreed to change the order to another type of meal (investing in fossil fuel facilities within the US).

The US is unable to implement export controls so consuming less than it creates doesnt mean theres enough since producers will export if international prices are better

Ireland during the famine was self sufficient with food production but that didn't stop people from sending food to the highest bidders abroad.

It didn't look like that at the gas pump today.

Ignoring the part where just running everything off fossil fuel is suicidal for the planet, the US actually isn't self-sufficient with just fossil fuels.

https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/fossil-fuels-fall-be...

Renewables are cheaper to build out, and we're facing a massive energy shortage. We need to be building renewable production as quickly as possible just to keep up with demand.

Insisting that we use obsolete, expensive and dirty technologies while the rest of the planet modernizes is just dumb.

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