[HN Gopher] Your price at the pump went up. So did Saudi Aramco'...
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Your price at the pump went up. So did Saudi Aramco's profits - to
a new record
Author : rntn
Score : 28 points
Date : 2022-08-14 18:22 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (text.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (text.npr.org)
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Doesn't this just mean, we'll start fracking again?
| nradov wrote:
| Not in California. Fracking is effectively banned.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/climate-business-environment-and-...
| jbverschoor wrote:
| That's been going on for quite a while already
| rayiner wrote:
| Yes, profits go up when there is a supply shock and demand
| outstrips supply. The effort to divert blame for the predictable
| results of deliberate policy choices--reducing domestic
| production--onto oil producer profits is really quite remarkable.
| If you want a different result, you need to either increase
| supply by increasing domestic production, or reduce demand by
| switching people to EVs. If you reduce supply without reducing
| demand then prices will go up and profits will go up.
|
| It's such a sign of how Americans have become a society of
| children. They are completely unable to grapple with trade offs:
| "if I do this thing I want to do, I'll have to pay this cost or
| give up something else." Any negative consequences must be
| externalized and blamed on someone else.
| feet wrote:
| It's weird how oil companies are purposely restricting supply.
| They have production capacity ready to go and not in current
| use and raw materials, but money is nicer to pad their bottom
| line.
| nradov wrote:
| There's nothing weird about it. During the 2020 presidential
| campaign, Joe Biden promised to shut down new oil drilling.
| Thus the domestic oil companies cut their investments in new
| production capacity.
|
| https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/20/facebook-p.
| ..
| feet wrote:
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/02/energy/us-oil-
| production/inde...
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/24/energy/gas-prices-oil-
| product...
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Which oil company has capacity? And what sense would it make
| for them to restrict supply?
|
| The only organization that has enough market power that it
| makes sense to restrict supply is OPEC.
| credit_guy wrote:
| I'm puzzled too. If the price of oil has gone up, as everyone
| and their grandmother knows, and Aramco's cost of extraction is
| constant, why would the profits not go up? Is Aramco supposed
| to sell below market price for some altruistic reasons?
| pyuser583 wrote:
| In many places it's illegal to sell below market rates.
|
| I used to work at a gas station, and every day would start
| with driving around and writing down the price of gas at the
| competition.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Saudi Arabia was smart enough to nationalise their oil industry.
| It was a long and hard struggle- they were completely exploited
| for decades by Western companies (with respect Saudi leaders were
| completely out of their depth). Payback is a bitch.
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