From Zero Hedge:
And another huge hit to future oil supply. After Goldman released a report on Friday, backtracking on its April recommendation that clients sell crude, instead warning that “critically tight supply-demand fundamentals” will likely cause oil prices to “return to or surpass the recent highs by next year”, “should Libyan oil supplies remain off the market”, which it now appears they will considering Gadaffi is winning the Libyan civil war against the West-backed rebellion, here comes a stunner out of Iraq which has just slashed its 2017 oil production estimate from 12 million barrels to just 6.5-7 million bbpd. Oddly enough, Iraq is being rational: “Baghdad believes it would not be in its interests to try to achieve the 12 million target by 2017 because boosting global supply would depress prices.” …
Maybe the Donald is right about this – perhaps we should just take their oil?
But, no; it is their oil; and as it won’t last forever, and they have absolutely nothing else we want, it is wisdom on their part to get a premium for it…our job is to ensure that we need as little of it as possible. And that means drill, baby, drill. Unless we want to keep dancing to this tune for another generation, we’re going to have to get serious about improving our own domestic supplies as we transition to a non-oil economy. Massive efforts at exploration, drilling and refining should be undertaken…not so much to make us energy independent (probably won’t happen until we really do have a viable alternative energy, and any increase in domestic production means a better economy for us), but to create so much capacity in the United States that we can counter price-hike moves (you know, oil exporter says they’ll restrict production to keep the price high, we ramp it up to drop it back down…bottom line, production will probably remain stable).
We can act like adults about this, or we can act like pie-in-the-sky, environmentalist liberals. The choice is ours – to drill, or not to drill; that is the question.
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