The problems in California are political/philosophical. They have rather substantial reserves of oil, both offshore and on land.

https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2025/3052/fs20253052.pdf

They just won’t allow it to be developed.

And their politicians seem to believe that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is more a negotiable suggestion than an actual physical constraint.

I strongly believe what's about to happen to California during this energy crisis will mark the end of Gavin Newsome's 2028 Presidential aspirations

Maybe. The primary voters literally don't care, many of them actually *want* euro-style $20/gal gasoline to encourage everyone to ride bikes and take the bus.

It could actually be a problem in the general election. So it's possible that the party will intervene in the primary to ensure Newsom isn't the nominee (maybe a Swalwell file or the like?). There are rumblings on the left that they need some mid-west moderate-ish white guy for 28. Even some on the far left, they're getting tired of losing and consequences... eight years of some combination of Vance/Rubio would be mean at least a couple more SCOTUS picks.

[QUOTE=rickair7777;4028049]Maybe. The primary voters literally don't care, many of them actually *want* euro-style $20/gal gasoline to encourage everyone to ride bikes and take the bus.

Well that was the idea of energy independence - not just oil - renewables!!! etc etc. I’ve been driving electric since 2019. I don’t do it to be some green Ahole or to save the world. I put solar on my captains house and thought it’s pretty cool I pay for most of my energy needs from the sun. Granted I don’t have any kids to put through college . I paid $32K for solar to power my entire life at home. Payoff 8 years. And I use my full self driving 80-90 percent of the time. It pulls into my garage after a long 4 day.

I have a pretty good idea. Park all our nuclear Navy fleet off both coasts with a long extension cord and water hose. Taxpayer power and water problems solved . If there’s a reactor issue or need them to drop bombs somewhere they disconnect and sail away. Israel can pay us back with their water desalination technology as they are the leaders in that.

[QUOTE=madmax757;4028122]100% agree Nuclear is the long term solution. It's a long cycle solution though. Permitting and construction takes around a decade for each new plant. Same for new Oil Refinery. Also tough to build billion dollar+ infrastructure with critical shortages of diesel for at least a year or 2

133 pages and you want to complain ?......whiners and malcontents.... of course, that's like, just my opinion.

[QUOTE=Trip7;4028131]Might be a longer timeline if on California time.....might be shorter if on Trump time.

"Necessity is the mother of invention"

[QUOTE=Trip7;4028131]that’s why the idea of multiple smaller ones on ships or oil rig type vessels. There’s about 100 reactors in the US fleet and I’ve never heard of one failing. If there’s something questionable and needs to be shut down - scuttle it and sink it or sent it out as far as you can. Iron dome them to the max to prevent any terror attacks

right..
Buck Rogers was a U.S. Air Force pilot who awoke from a 500-year sleep to discover that America had been overrun by Mongol invaders and was almost in ruins. Aided by his space companion Wilma Deering and his mentor, the brilliant scientist Dr. Huer, Buck Rogers defeated the invaders and freed America.

Simple enough though. Embrace it or vote with your feet:) This shoot from the hip move, in its entirety, retarded. Past time now to start moving towards the #$&*= !!! exit slide.

[QUOTE=Trip7;4028131]It is apparent you have more knowledge regarding the oil/refinery industry than most of us here.

Can you provide a basic explanation of a few numbers that don't fit the rhetoric?

The US extracts about 13.5 million bbls/day of oil.
US refineries use about 16.5 mbl/day.
Yet we not only export crude oil, we seem to be actively encouraging this as national policy.
Is there a basic 101 type reasoning for this?

Total distillate produced in the US is about 21.5 to 22 mbl/day.
Total consumed in US is about 20.5mbl/day.
Is the additional 8 mbl/day produced only natural gas and ethanol equivelencys?
Or do we do "gaming" by including the 10%volume increase from refing and other such things, which change the numbers from a field production perspective to an end product perspective.

Do you have insight as to how long the oil production from basins that are asseessable primarily only by fracking will continue to be productive?
(obviously price gets involved.. $100/bbl can encourage a lot more drilling than $60 oil)

Trip7.
I just made a post with questions on the oil industry i meant for you.
Somehow I managed to post it as a reply to madmax.
Please see my earlier post.
Apologies to both you and madmax for my carelessness

Short answer: It's complicated, but there are reasons.

Refineries are optimized for specific types of crude stock (that come from different regions) and are also optimized to produced specific products. That came about based on where crude was economically available from at the time, many decades ago.

The marketplace and logistics systems evolved around that, including extremely costly infrastructure like pipelines and big-ass tankers. Certain types of crude (from certain regions) goes to certain refineries, and the distillate products then go to certain customers.

The US probably could become oil-independent. The problem is that would require a very major re-configuration of refinery and logistics infrastructure. Costly and disruptive.

It would also require big changes to the legal infrastructure to isolate us from the global oil (and gas?) market, which would also be costly and disruptive. And the there would be additional disruption as the global market and economy reacts to our changes. Likely some of that retaliatory in nature (Japan attacked the US in 1941 basically because we cut off their oil).

So in reality it's not happening, unless it comes about in the natural course of recovery after some apocalyptic catastrophe.


As you say, higher prices will justify access to additional deposits which are not economical to produce at lower prices. That's not an infinite sliding scale, but basically we've just barely scratched the surface of frackable reserves (in the US). It's also expected that technological advances will increase access even at lower prices.

“Big oil” wants to own the oil before it comes out the ground, and refine it at facilities they already own. Cheapest places to source oil are Africa and S America and Gulf.

Drilling company’s want to drill for oil and sell oil for profit to whoever pays the most to refine it.

Drilling company’s want top dollar and lobby government to sell their product overseas.

They don’t want major oil company’s squeezing them out of their profits. Major oil wants to pay them a labor rate for drilling and cut out the equity of drilling for profit.

The U.S. will never be energy independent simply because we don’t produce enough heavy crude. Most of what we get here is light sweet crude. North America independent would be possible but we’d have to build new or rework a good portion of our refineries.

My understanding as well. We’re simply not set up to refine what we pull out of the ground.

Well we had a president that killed a major pipeline from Canada to push heavy crude to us.

It was determined more palatable to haul it on rail at an added carbon and actual cost because it feels more temporary than a pipeline. People’s feelings matter, a new pipeline is too long of a commitment to oil.

We are set up to run the cheap stuff, and sell the expense stuff.

Cheap energy is preferred to independent energy most of the years.

No one advocates independent energy unless they think it means cheaper energy.

The less developed world is setup to run the expensive stuff and sell the cheap stuff because to refine/process the cheap stuff requires more development.

[QUOTE=MaxQ;4028332]Rickair answered much of these questions very well, particularly about why the US exports so much of its light sweet oil. Quick summary:

• US Refineries are optimized for heavy sour crude. US production is mostly light sweet crude.
• It would take years and Billions of dollars to upgrade US Refineries for light sweet crude
• Light sweet crude produces lower yields of jet fuel/diesel and higher yields of gasoline/Petrol

The majority of the 10% volume increase is Natural Gas Liquids. These count as "petroleum liquids" but are not a crude oil substitute. Many politicians use the NGL inclusion in the data to make the highly misleading "net exporter" claim.

As far as the Shale basins the Permian remains the only basin with meaningful inventory in quality, Tier 1 locations. All other Basins have rolled over past their peak and are in terminal decline. $60 Oil certainly has far less economic drilling locations vs $100. US Shale Production will continue for quite a long time , although production numbers will likely be flat at best, and likely negative.

[QUOTE=Trip7;4028668]
It may be a little misleading to say “upgrade”.

Sour crude is corrosive to equipment so US refinery’s spent billions to upgrade equipment to process it because it’s sourced from poor countries and acquired cheap.

Sweet crude is less corrosive to equipment and inferior metals can safely be used so the rest of the world built to the minimum. Whats makes sweat crude more expensive is it can be processed at most all refineries and sour cannot.

Your basically saying you have to upgrade your salt water engine to operate in fresh water.

Its definitely a loss of efficiency to spend billions in upgrades to run sour crude then arbitrarily stop and buy sweet crude.

You don’t have to upgrade a 777 to fly 100 people 500 miles, but it’s a non starter business model because of a gross loss of efficiency. After you spent so much money investing in the equipment that can do more.

[QUOTE=OpieTaylor;4028702]good point. Not to mention, jet powerplants can run on Chevron if they have to..

You're absolutely right and you highlight a great paradox of the energy market and in a nutshell, this crisis.

We essentially pay a "purity premium" for Light Sweet Crude precisely because it requires less work to process, even though its natural yields are somewhat misaligned with the heavy duty needs of the modern industrial global economy.

While gasoline powers the passenger fleet, diesel and jet fuel power the global supply chain. Moreover, Heavy/Sour crudes naturally have much higher yields for jet fuel and diesel. This is where Complex Refineries like those in the USA shine and you are spot on to correct that "upgrade" was the wrong word choice.

Absolutely fair criticism. Energy is simply too important to be subject to the latest political whims. We need some sort of arrangement like we had during the cold war where both parties agreed that coherent, long term policies were far more important than short term political victories.

[QUOTE=METO Guido;4028706]They can run on almost anything, including peanut butter.

But despite having slight better specific energy than Jet A, gasoline has some properties that make it problematic for airline aviation, volatility being the biggy.

[QUOTE=rickair7777;4028766]Jiffy, I dunno. But here’s what can happen if you use a garden hose into a mechanical FCU;)

https://youtu.be/D9J91Iq52Bk?si=6IzqVhcPhkoXfqhL

[QUOTE=METO Guido;4028706]I dunno about a CFM turbofan, but a PT6 can only run 150 hours on 100LL before requiring overhaul...

[QUOTE=Turbosina;4028789] Can’t imagine it would do it any good. With any luck they’ll put this nightmare to bed this week.
What’s the story with the quote function btw?

Seems to be working OK. What trouble were you having with it?

Ah, I see now…
Disregard.

Seems to be an issue with mobile version of the website. Have to manually remove the first Quote prompt which is incorrect. Seems like a software bug that should be an easy fix

I’ve reported it MULTIPLE TIMES. One mod had the cajones to tell me it was my fault when using the quote function :rolleyes:

Lol, obviously.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s national rial currency hit a record low Wednesday of 1.8 million to the dollar as a shaky ceasefire with the U.S. and Israel holds.

The rial had remained stable in the early weeks of the war that began Feb. 28, in part because there was little trading or imports.

The rial began to slide two days ago. Experts warn that its fall is likely to further fuel inflation in a country where many imported goods, from food and medicine to electronics and raw materials, are affected by the dollar rate.

A U.S. naval blockade during the ceasefire has increased pressure on Iran’s already battered economy, cutting into a key source of government revenue and hard currency by stopping or intercepting oil shipments.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Wednesday his government was continuing efforts to help ease tensions between the U.S and Iran following an initial round of direct talks on April 11.

I'll ask them to look at it again.

Please do. Adds an unnecessary annoying element to trying to follow the discussion.

Send Vagabond to negotiate while you’re at it Commodore. Ships ahoy by next Monday.

and just like that….it’s already fixed.

I doubt the IRGC cares about the Rial to Dollar since they are asking Hormuz toll to be paid in Yuan. Also it seems the IRGC is focused on driving Oil to $200 and also breaking the US bond market which should cause absolute calamity on the market

Oil at $200 means you have to sell 1/3 less and you can make the same amount of revenue vs back in Feb, sounds like a win-win for oil producers.

200 dollars!! Is this gonna be “the big one”? Do we start packing a Python or S&W? Time to start rewatching Mad Max movies.

Asian cargoes are already loading in the $170s. They'll pay anything to prevent shutting down refiners which is an extremely expensive process.

The Oil market is like toilet paper. You don't realize how badly you need it until you run out. As long as there's still inventory to draw down here in the US there won't be panic

It’s not real until we see Atlas flying KC-46s to China to keep Amazon production lines moving.