"People are depleting their emergency stocks. Losing emergency stocks may become painful in the months to come."In response, influential Democrats, including a leading U.S. Senate candidate, a former Department of Energy official, and an influential energy expert, are urging the U.S. government to socialize America's oil and gas firms.
At a Houston conference last week, Jason Bordoff, Dean of Columbia University's Climate School, called for the "nationalization" of oil and gas companies.
"Government must take an active role in owning assets that will become stranded and plan to strand those assets."By "strand" Bordoff meant "make financially worthless." Bordoff made the point at least twice during the conference. Bordoff's call shocked many in the audience. "Jason is smart, well-informed, and well-connected to the Biden Administration," said someone who was at the conference, "so these comments are scary."
The calls come on the heels of two other Democrat-led efforts to expand U.S. government control over oil and gas production. One is a piece of legislation called "NOPEC," which passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in May. The bill would change U.S. antitrust law to revoke a policy of sovereign immunity, which protects OPEC+ members from lawsuits. If NOPEC became law, the U.S. attorney general could sue Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members in court. The result could be a disruption of global supplies of oil and other commodities if nations retaliated against the U.S.
The other is an effort led by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to cap the price of Russian oil sold on global markets, which I and many other experts have warned since June is unworkable, because China and India have said they would circumvent it, and could backfire, resulting in far higher oil prices. Last week, analysts with Rapidan Energy told the same Houston conference that the December 5 implementation of the Russian price cap could reduce global supplies of oil by 1.5 million barrels per day. Such an amount would create an oil price shock.
Earlier this month, Bordoff told the World Economic Forum, which has called for a "Great Reset" to quickly move from fossil fuels to renewables, that climate change required a
"massive transition that is "going to be messy, it's going to be disruptive. I think part of the broader macro environment that's happening now is one of more disruptive change because of climate impacts, but also more disruptive change because of geopolitics coming out of the pandemic, coming out of this conflict, completely rethinking what the World Economic Forum is all about."Bordoff then sounded an even darker note.
Reader Comments
The only part of the U.S. north east that is not impacted are those states along the sea board south of the Canadian refineries at Nova Scotia and Newfoundland which have been shipping product south for decades.
All we get from Justin are new carbon taxes. No new pipelines. We ship so much crude and chemical by rail that the farmers can't get their harvest to market fast enough.
It often feels like we are being kept like a fat milking cow by the Americans and/or a more powerful global interest who intend on consuming us completely as, and when, the need arises. It all makes me want Premier Smith's wall.