Always laugh at Jamie having a $18 price target on American the day they declared bankruptcy and went to zero. It is amazing that these chowderheaded "experts" make a living by giving these opinions.


The bottom line we need to remember as Americans and Human Beings is that oil has always been a dirty business. Speculative con artists who get ripped off by sociopathic monopolists when they actually do find something. Few actual jobs with distant owners who manipulate prices. Then when it's done they declare that project bankrupt and leave a catastrophic mess that poisons the locals and becomes a burden for taxpayers. ... and that is where there is sufficient law and order to prevent genocide to clear out inconveniently located indigenous people, or the tens of thousands with the wrong political affiliation.


Our nation is plagued by oil interests who play at culture wars to keep us preoccupied so that we don't actually care about the clean air and water our kids need to you know, raise their kids.


... and all of this dumps poison is our atmosphere, a gigantic resource, but not unlimited.


However, there is a lot of room for optimism. Grid-level electrical storage solutions are in production and are simply better. Want a fast car? Obviously electric. Want a commercial truck that is super easy to drive, many orders of magnitude more reliable and longer lasting, something that can be loaded and refueled at the same time? Obviously electric. So say you are a politician and you want local energy jobs; electric. For most applications electricity is so much better and cheaper the transition is happening; only limited by how fast these things can be built out. Want an electric truck? Expect a three to five year wait. How about an electric car from 2017? Even that's a one-year wait due to demand ... and that is with a 4X increase in production capacity that will be 10X by May of this year!


The other factor accelerating the transition is that these things are much cheaper and easier to build. Tesa is probably going to see a 40% margin on cars built at Giga Texas. Ford was at something at 2% to 4%. In Australia local power production from renewables (closed loop) with grid-level storage lowered costs, compared with fully amortized coal operations, by 40% (2019 numbers) which was pretty evenly split between 20% lower consumer costs and 20% more profit for the operators. We are on the cusp of a much better version of an industrial revolution.


The oil interests are not giving up their power easily. Whether it be Putin/'s war to cut Ukraine out of competition for the German gas business to Republicans and some Democrats trying to prevent democracy from unseating these incumbent powers, it is going to be ugly for us in the working class.


But, once things stabilize, oil prices will be lower and more stable. Oil will still be needed for transportation requiring very energy-dense applications and for all kinds of consumer goods. The best thing that can happen for energy production is to make it diversified and local, thus avoiding the concentrations that lead to wars over the nasty stuff.