Democrats and their wrong headed energy policies

Steve Feinstein:
Proving a negative -- proving that the absence of something is definitively due to very specific reasons or circumstances -- is an inexact science at best. There is a hugely significant “negative” that  has occurred recently, one that is quite plausibly due to some very distinct actions and clear-cut decisions made by the American oil industry and the Trump administration: the non-event that has happened is world crude oil prices not rising in spite of the cruise missile and drone attack on the Saudi oil fields on September 14th, 2019 that destroyed a significant portion of Saudi oil production, the missile attack on an Iranian oil tanker in waters off Saudi Arabia on October 11th, 2019 and new Mideast unrest in the form of Turkey’s military incursion into Syria in mid-October. In years past, any one of these incidents would have spooked the world’s oil market into n hysterical price spike; today, the cumulative effect of all of them is not even a murmur on the radarscope. U.S. retail gasoline pricing has not really gone up at all in the face of these episodes.
Why? What is different now?
Remember a few years ago during the Obama administration when oil/gas pricing was high? The popular line among the Democrats -- obsessed as they were about not offending their Green voting bloc -- was, “We can’t drill our way out of this [high oil pricing].”
Just like subsequent events in other areas have proven them wrong about so many things (“The stock market will tank if Trump is elected!”), the Democrats were wrong about this too. Dead wrong. As fracking and other drilling/extraction technologies (such as horizontal drilling and the capability to rejuvenate old wells previously thought to be “unproductive”) have improved, the oil output of the United States has increased to its highest level in 50 years. In fact, U.S oil production is more than double what it was as recently as just ten years ago, before the fracking revolution. Depending on the particular study one is looking at, the U.S. ranks anywhere from 3rd to 1st in highest oil output in the world. We produce so much oil that we’ve actually become a net exporter of oil for the first time since the 1940s. So quite simply, we did “drill our way out of this.”
The Democrats’ affection for the ill-conceived, fantastical Green New Deal is an example of unintellectual wishful thinking pushing aside factual reality.  So-called “sustainable, renewable” fuels are simply not economically viable in today’s energy market without heavy government subsidies. It’s just too expensive. For example, electric cars still only represent a 2% share of the U.S. auto market, despite all the frenzied attention, government subsidies and publicity they’ve received. Battery technology remains too expensive and too short-lived for electric vehicles to be affordable for the mass market and for drivers to have a reliable, confidence-inspiring range of over 400 miles. A comprehensive, country-wide recharging infrastructure still doesn’t exist, so regardless of their range or the affordability of the purchase price, without the assurance of being able to “refuel” anywhere away from home, electric cars are sentenced to only really being suitable for around-town/recharge-at-home use.
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Current alternative energy is unreliable and lacks the ability to scale to meet demand.  A better alternative would be to find a way to extract hydrogen from oil in the ground.  Canada has been doing some research in this area and claims it can do so from the oil sands up there.  It also makes more sense as a fuel than electric cars which take to long to recharge and would put even more stress on the grid.

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