I’m sure Aramco’s costs include a LOT of paying people too much for too little; not a public company until last year, and even with the greater oversight public companies may have, they don’t do too well on that score. Actual production costs, given the existing infrastructure, I expect are low. The loss of income may destabilize SA and thereby raise costs, but I bet they can undercut everyone for actual production costs ATM. My concern is as laid out in the Guardian piece; lower cost for oil will disincentivize efforts to replace it.
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There are countless ways one can show that an individuals choices, however environmentally friendly, are merely a fraction of a drop in the bucket.
Systemic change is what’s needed. I can never buy plastic again and nothing would change, but if the industry collapses, that’s another story.
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I was waiting for this non sequitur fallacy to rear it’s ugly head. If you want to have a discussion on moral philosophy, by all means we can, but let’s start off by being informed.
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What does he want us to do, wave a magic wand and make oil $80/barrel?
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I guess it all depends on how long the price is low and how long the system can run without further investment, because even the most bullish investor isn’t going to invest in a system that consistently loses money.
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That is a such a dumb argument, I really hate this type of argument.
It’s possible to both take part in a system and critique it. Flipping that around: it’s basically impossible to totally extract yourself from a system and critique it.
To “removed all hydrocarbon energy and byproducts from your daily life” you would basically need to live as a hermit. Posting on these forums would be incredibly difficult if not impossible without taking part in the current system.
I don’t think this is your intention but if you logically follow your argument, you basically want to silence everybody. Because almost nobody can perfectly live without “hydrocarbon energy and byproducts”.
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He wants his base to believe Trudeau can do that, so they will be outraged when he doesn’t.
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does “the system” need more investment? The question should perhaps be “how long the price was artificially high” Shale and oilsands existed always at the whim of the Saudis, right? It surprises me how willingly investors put money into both those extraction methods, given the long amortization period. Pipeline people at least here in Canada have figured this out; not gonna get fifty years out of the new facilities… “Hey Canada, wanna buy a pipeline?” Kinder Morgan knew what they were doing.
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Suffering my ass. They can still buy yachts out of their pocket change. It’s the guy who works for minimum wage at the service station who’s suffering.
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The only way you can do that is to live in a cave with no heat and wear nothing and eat nothing but tree bark. And most likely to get to the place where the cave is you have to get on some kind of hydrocarbon-fueled motor vehicle. Get real.
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I fear much of this is from “take or pay” contracts with large users.
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Before the Rona, I was commuting 40 miles a day each way for work, four days per week. During the Rona, I’ve been in a car twice in the last month. I certainly haven’t been on public transportation either, in closer to two months. My house is all electric, and powered by wind. So… not by choice, but my oil consumption has gone down a shit ton (official units there). I doubt I’m alone there either.
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I don’t think drilling operations work that way. If you stop extracting your maintenance costs will basically stay the same, while your profits will stop.
They are like sharks, if they stop moving they die.
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On the oil price collapse, this is basically what’s happening:
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I would have thought that GIS was just as relevant for renewables.
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The price of fuel at the pump is:
50% taxes
35% labor
10% COGS
5% profit.
give or take. if you reduce the COGS, you still got taxes labor and profit to pay for. a free barrel of oil will not power your gasoline powered vehicle. Better to ditch it, and get a leg-powered bike.
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I don’t think it would have a big impact on their costs, because if this is not a loophole that anyone with an expected demand in the future can exploit.
If I understood it correctly, it is more a shock caused by the sudden drop in the demand that affected the value because there is no more infrastructure to cope with more oil being pumped and it affects only short-term prices (the article mentions the price for May), but I guess that the price for the next months already takes that in account and are less affected.
Because of that, no one will offer them a deal for oil to be delivered next year based on this very low price.
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Seems like this doesn’t jive with reality. Consider the fluctuations (that we can observe over time) in the correlation of cost per barrel and price at the pump, but y’know, that’s just my opinion.
Either way, my comment was meant flippantly. I have no dog in this fight.
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