I also wonder if all the airlines (that think they’ll be able to avoid or navigate bankruptcy) are renegotiating all their fuel contracts.
3 Likes
8 Likes
First we paid them to pull the oil out of the ground. Now we need to pay them to put it back.
NC has statues that prevent price changes like that. Gas stations are only allowed to adjust prices after they are refilled. It’s why there can be a variance in the price even at gas stations in close proximity.
6 Likes
I thought that stations get refilled multiple times a week.
10 Likes
All the talk in this thread of wanting people to suffer rubs me the wrong way. The people who are gonna suffer with the oil industry getting hit like this aren’t the climate-change-denying head honchos. It’s gonna be the rank-and-file workers in the cubicles and out in the field who get laid off, get their pay cut, and so forth.
My cousin got laid off from his oil company job in Midland, Texas. He’s an engineer, and can go nearly anywhere, but I’m not sure how a job-hunt for him is gonna work during this pandemic and even afterward with the recession we’re in. My other cousin’s husband works in the oil fields and he’s still employed for now, but with the way things are going, it feels like there’s just a waiting game for the other shoe to drop at this point.
I’m planning on going into GIS. I live in Houston, and I’m almost done with my degree and looking to get a job at an engineering consulting firm that I’m lined up to do an internship with later this fall. This recession could mean that that firm won’t be taking on any interns or very few new entry-level employees, and an oil crash means that any internships or new starting jobs at energy companies too. My classmates also pursuing GIS degrees are likely to be in the same boat, especially those that planned on going into the energy industry in the first place.
But fuck me and all of my classmates for choosing the wrong field to go into and the wrong city to be born in or immigrate to, amirite?
3 Likes
Does this mean they can’t even give away the stuff they’re pulling out of the ground now?
Those figures i quote came from an analysis I read that put Russian oil the cheapest to access, hence their enthusiasm for a price war. It turns out it’s much harder than expected to get accurate numbers on this, but this article and this article are interesting. As is this academic article, though with not many actual numbers. It actually looks worse than I posited, and no company is going to survive with negative oil prices!
7 Likes
If you choose to go into the oil industry, or have failed to leave in the last thirty years, then i think you are due little sympathy. It’s an industry that is unethical to its core.
Edit: I do think that people should be supported and helped until they find work, regardless of the industry they came from, but I certainly think the collapse of the oil industry, when it comes, is long overdue.
7 Likes
Ok, so, hypothetical: Oil & gas industry flat-out collapses within the span of a month and countless people are out of work. Where do they go and what do they do? How do you support all those people in tons of different countries if the whole industry just falls out from under them? Licking your chops at the idea of 3.8% of the global economy straight-up burning down because you think it’s unethical to the core is pretty unethical itself.
The best option is for the oil & gas industry to slowly fizzle out over time, not explode and take out a decent chunk of the economy along with it.
1 Like
The time for fizzling out was thirty years ago. Now it just needs to go. I suppose you’d have made the same arguments about the need to sustain the slaving industry and let it slowly fizzle out?
2 Likes
Comparing the oil & gas industry to slavery is one hell of a stretch.
When an industry employs and pays a lot of people around the world, wishing for it to out-and-out collapse and then offering vague platitudes like “I do hope that these people who had the rug pulled out from under them get some sort of help!” when the way a ton of oil-producing countries work (or fail to work), the raw majority of them won’t be able to get that social safety net, is selfish.
Yeah, I know, climate change sucks ass, and the oil company execs who held back climate change evidence deserve some serious consequences. But the social upheaval that would be caused by the entire industry rapidly imploding wouldn’t do the world any favors, either.
3 Likes
I’m well aware of how dire the climate change situation is. But the global fossil fuel industry collapsing and countless people losing their livelihoods, many in countries like the U.S. with shitty social safety nets that do little to help alongside the current momentum that our changing climate has would make the human cost even greater and suck a colossal amount of ass.
1 Like
The solution then is to have proper social security, not to perpetuate the problem industry. Don’t get me wrong, I’m acutely conscious that this needs to be done well, but the most pressing problem we face (and that includes covid19) is how to transition very quickly to a carbon negative economy.
10 Likes
They do. The intent of the law is to keep stations from price gouging during a price spike. If oil prices surge or a natural disaster shutdown refinery production it keeps the prices in line to actual supply and doesn’t allow the station to jump prices just because of the news. Now 1 to 3 days later, yes prices will spike, but if you are paying attention to the news you hopefully had time to fill up before the price jump.
The same law keeps prices from falling as quickly. Although the station has already paid for what is in the ground, so they need to recoup at least its cost to not loose money.
2 Likes
7 Likes
There is a problem with the “nowhere to stash what is pumped out” narrative. They can simply stop extracion operations for now. Something else is going on.
2 Likes
Have you removed all hydrocarbon energy and byproducts from your daily life?
3 Likes
