Hmmm...Is Trump turning Democrat? Raise taxes on the rich, force drug companies to sell to Medicare at the prices they charge in foreign countries, eliminate taxes on tips...what's next? Medicare for all?
"Abandon hope all ye who enter here"
Killington Zone
You can checkout any time you like,
but you can never leave
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function" =
F. Scott Fitzgerald
"There's nothing more frightening than ignorance in action" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Hmmm...Is Trump turning Democrat? Raise taxes on the rich, force drug companies to sell to Medicare at the prices they charge in foreign countries, eliminate taxes on tips...what's next? Medicare for all?
April's GOP budget blueprint seems to suggest cuts to Medicare.
Hmmm...Is Trump turning Democrat? Raise taxes on the rich, force drug companies to sell to Medicare at the prices they charge in foreign countries, eliminate taxes on tips...what's next? Medicare for all?
April's GOP budget blueprint seems to suggest cuts to Medicare.
Hmmm...Is Trump turning Democrat? Raise taxes on the rich, force drug companies to sell to Medicare at the prices they charge in foreign countries, eliminate taxes on tips...what's next? Medicare for all?
This is one place I can agree with Trump - we need to raise taxes. It's the only fiscally responsible alternative we have right now. There is just not enough fat and waste to cut to get the deficit down to 3% of GDP, and I think Musk and DOGE proved that.
On the other hand, I think talk of a trillion dollar defense budget is insanity. We should be looking at cutting defense spending. We are still buying too many expensive weapons and systems and not focusing enough on cheap drones. We should have learned that lesson from Ukraine by now.
Trump promised U.S. dominance. Instead, energy companies are faltering.
Oil and gas firms are reeling, and major renewables projects are getting shelved as Trump’s policies rattle energy investors and executives.
Three months into the new administration, the price of U.S. oil has plunged to below the drilling profitability threshold of about $65 per barrel and the industry is ailing. At the same time, the U.S. energy economy is being further destabilized by White House attacks on clean power. It is a stark reversal from last year, when the United States was rocketing ahead on clean energy projects, pushed by government, and oil industry executives were brimming with optimism amid record production.
Companies are opting not to add new wells out of fear they will lose money. The number of active rigs in Texas is lower now than it has been since the nation was climbing out of the pandemic. The president’s tariffs are meanwhile driving up costs in U.S. oilfields, leaving firms hesitant to invest in expanding production.
"Abandon hope all ye who enter here"
Killington Zone
You can checkout any time you like,
but you can never leave
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function" =
F. Scott Fitzgerald
"There's nothing more frightening than ignorance in action" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Bubba wrote: ↑May 10th, '25, 11:13
Trump promised U.S. dominance. Instead, energy companies are faltering.
Oil and gas firms are reeling, and major renewables projects are getting shelved as Trump’s policies rattle energy investors and executives.
Three months into the new administration, the price of U.S. oil has plunged to below the drilling profitability threshold of about $65 per barrel and the industry is ailing. At the same time, the U.S. energy economy is being further destabilized by White House attacks on clean power. It is a stark reversal from last year, when the United States was rocketing ahead on clean energy projects, pushed by government, and oil industry executives were brimming with optimism amid record production.
Companies are opting not to add new wells out of fear they will lose money. The number of active rigs in Texas is lower now than it has been since the nation was climbing out of the pandemic. The president’s tariffs are meanwhile driving up costs in U.S. oilfields, leaving firms hesitant to invest in expanding production.
Bubba wrote: ↑May 10th, '25, 11:13
Trump promised U.S. dominance. Instead, energy companies are faltering.
Oil and gas firms are reeling, and major renewables projects are getting shelved as Trump’s policies rattle energy investors and executives.
Three months into the new administration, the price of U.S. oil has plunged to below the drilling profitability threshold of about $65 per barrel and the industry is ailing. At the same time, the U.S. energy economy is being further destabilized by White House attacks on clean power. It is a stark reversal from last year, when the United States was rocketing ahead on clean energy projects, pushed by government, and oil industry executives were brimming with optimism amid record production.
Companies are opting not to add new wells out of fear they will lose money. The number of active rigs in Texas is lower now than it has been since the nation was climbing out of the pandemic. The president’s tariffs are meanwhile driving up costs in U.S. oilfields, leaving firms hesitant to invest in expanding production.
How can anybody… take the WaPo seriously?..
You don't have to take them seriously, but if you actually read the article, you can take the quotes from industry people seriously. Or you can just stay in denial and believe whatever you want to believe...
“It is truly affecting everybody,” said T. Grant Johnson, president of Lone Star Production Company, an oil exploration firm in Texas. “There was a lot of talk of, ‘drill baby, drill.’ But these companies are not going to drill if the economics aren’t there. All this fear and uncertainty is causing people to be far more cautious.”
He warns the challenges threaten political blowback for Trump.
“If this pain runs too long and spills into the midterm elections, it could become very uncomfortable for the people who got us here,” said Johnson, who chairs the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association. “And this would all be for naught.”
“Bracing for a crisis” is how research firm Wood Mackenzie characterizes the state of the oil industry. Bryan Sheffield, a major investor in shale oil, told Bloomberg recently that his sector could be facing a “bloodbath.”
The tone was similarly ominous in an anonymous survey of 130 fossil fuel and related companies published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in late March.
“The administration’s chaos is a disaster for the commodity markets,” one company responded, calling the “drill, baby, drill” mantra a myth and the tariff policy unpredictable.
“I have never felt more uncertainty about our business in my entire 40-plus-year career” another wrote. Another comment was even more blunt: “This is not ‘energy dominance.’”
The mood in West Texas, said D. Kirk Edwards, an oil and gas executive and former chair of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, is eerily like it was when the pandemic first hit, when oil prices plunged and companies stopped drilling.
“I think we are going to see within 30 to 60 days a lot of the rigs running today idled,” he said. “Most people are in shock at how this can happen with a Republican administration.”
Edwards says he is surprised by how aggressively Trump is pursuing tariffs that are creating pain for the industry, including boosting steel and aluminum tariffs to 25 percent. “Everybody was curious about the idea of using them as a negotiating tool,” he said. “I don’t think anybody in our industry thought steel products going into oil and gas wells would be such a big part of it.”
"Abandon hope all ye who enter here"
Killington Zone
You can checkout any time you like,
but you can never leave
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function" =
F. Scott Fitzgerald
"There's nothing more frightening than ignorance in action" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
