OilDaddy

U.S. Oil Production Today Same as in 1948

As one petroleum engineer who left the West Texas oil fields in 1962 because I saw no future in the domestic oil business and learned upon joining the New York financial community that the lack of economics in the domestic oil industry was due to self-proclaimed petroleum economists at Harvard and MIT convincing the NE liberal establishment led Congress the country could get all the oil it ever would need from the Middle East at $1.50/B instead of paying domestic producers $3/B. Despite President Eisenhower's efforts to limit the oil importation program because he knew it was the domestic oil industry that enabled the Allies to win WWII and believed the nation needed to preserve a strong oil industry, the liberal establishment hell bent upon destroying the Country's strong industrial complex held forth and what resulted is a story of the destruction of the U.S and International oil industries.

The comparison between domestic oil production in 1950 and today is a good one because it depicts the effect the illogical, brain dead, socialistic, anti-industry, academic styled economic theories and Congress' involvement manipulating domestic oil prices by importing steadily rising amounts of cheap foreign oil from 1.0 MMBPD in 1958 to 6.0MMBPD in 1973.

Not to be undone by disastrous results of their 1958-1973 cheap oil price policy which created OPEC in 1960, resulted in nationalization of Middle East oil fields, almost destroyed the domestic oil industry's infrastructure and saw the oil price controlled by Saudi Arabia grow to $34/B in 1981, petroleum economists of U.S. and British based academia determined in 1985 the oil price needed to support the Group of Seven's "One World Economy" plan conceived to control rising inflation rates in the industrial nations to be $15/B. And so, between 1986 and 2001 by building "strategic oil supplies" and distorting oil supply figures, the Group of Seven were able to hold world oil prices at an average $15/B.

What the 1958-1973 $3/B average oil price didn't do to completely destroy the domestic oil industry's infrastructure, the 1986-2001$15/B average oil price not only destroyed the domestic oil industry infrastructure, it practically destroyed the international oil industry's infrastructure to the extent the major problem to restoring domestic oil production and increasing international oil production is a shortage of skilled men, materials and modern equipment. A problem Russia, China and India are rushing to solve by educating the large numbers of engineers and geologists who should be in position within the next five to ten years to restore the international oil industry to normalcy, hopefully, without further interference from brain-dead academics who for the past fifty years haven't yet figured out that building and maintaining a strong economic environment requires a steady supply of energy rather than a university full of tenured professors with a grudge against the private sector that won't hire them who resort to consulting with politicians in ways designed to undermine the capitalistic spirit.