re: #8 Obdicut

… Oil is fungible. As the article makes clear, and as everyone knows but those who choose to ignore it, this means that sourcing your oil from different places does not in the least bit affect the economic prosperity of those selling the oil….

Let me (pedant that I am) fill in a bit of details and make small corrections.

“Oil” is a small 3 letter, single syllable word that stands for many, many different things. There are many different hydrocarbons (and even non-hydrocarbons, such as alcohol) that in the vernacular goes by “oil”, regrettably.

Petroleum engineers have long devised special processes to convert one type of organic compound into another, but refineries are designed to be optimum for certain source products. E.g., refineries in California buy petroleum from in state as well as from Alaska, refineries in TX and LA tend to be designed for oil from the Gulf of Mexico, TX, Mexico, etc. Saudi oil tends to be low quality (but abundant), but petroleum from parts of Indonesia is very high quality. Etc.

The Syncrude from the tar sands will be bought by certain refineries (e.g., owned by the Kochs… cough… ) meant to make the most of the product.

What is more fungible than the raw or pre-processed sources is the end product. Gasoline components, diesel, etc. Indeed, much of Canadian crude goes to the US and the products flow back to Canada, same for Mexico, and this is why the data shows that US exports products like gasoline etc., though the US is a net importer.

All of this is important to understand why sources of petroleum or petroleum-like (e.g., Syncrude) makes only a small difference. The world is now 7 billion people and only a small minority consumes the amount of hydrocarbons per capita as the US. The potential market for hydrocarbons is much larger than the current production capability.

Thus any increase in the flow of products, say by converting more Canadian tar, simply goes onto the market and if the increase of amount lowers the price then more consumers around the world will simply come online and buy it. This is what is keeping “oil” from ever returning to the good old days of the 1950s and 1960’s when the US seemed to be swimming in an endless ocean of cheap energy.

For supposedly being “pro-market”, the American right wing seems to be void of understanding even the basics of capitalism.