Originally Posted by
METO Guido
Daniel Yergin speaking with Geoff Bennett..
“Geoff Bennett: Lessons learned. I mean, has the fact that America is now this major energy producer, as you point out, has that fundamentally changed the country's vulnerability to global conflicts?
Daniel Yergin: I think it's not changed it, because, at the end of the day, it's one global oil market, but it's given us insulation and it's made the United States such a dominant player that we were not before. So that's such a dramatic change from previous crises.
Disagree.
Were the US to DESIRE to do so, Congress coukd pass an excess profits tax on US oil companies exporting that would disincentivize petrochemical exports. They could LARGELY divorce the US petrochemical industry from the REST of the world economy. The companies would make less money and the international price of oil woukd increase, but manipulations to maximize profits (or retain more money locally) is what OPEC has been doing for decades.