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Matt Ridley has an excellent article on this topic. Here is a targeted quote from that article to answer your question on fracking profits:
(quote)
The falling oil price is largely the Americans’ fault. By reinventing the extraction process for first gas, then oil, with horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, engineers have almost doubled the country’s output of oil in six years. That ingenuity was made possible by the high price of oil, which promised fabulous riches to those who could get oil out of shale, but it is no longer dependent on the high price of oil. It is often said that the cure for high oil prices is high oil prices and so it has proved.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) says that most shale oil production remains profitable at $80 a barrel. One North Dakota oilman tells me that his rate of return on fracked wells drops to 10 per cent only when oil prices reach $55, and that’s without taking into account the falling price of fuel for his vehicles. Every month American oil production rises by 100,000 barrels a day at the moment and that is not going to change for a year or so whatever happens to the price of oil. The number of rigs drilling for oil will start to drop off if the oil price falls further, but only slowly. Of course, unlike the nationalised decisions of Opec, oil production in America is the sum of the investment decisions of hundreds of independent companies.
(endquote)
The entire article may be found at:
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/che...
Jan
Much like various precious metal mines open and close based on bullion prices.
I found your comment interesting even though not being in complete agreement.
However, my response is for a different reason. I've noticed many people who write on the internet not using even rudimentary punctuation which tends to make me quit reading their comments very quickly. I know that it has become somewhat acceptable to not capitalize the first word of sentences and for that matter not bothering to use spell check and other computer grammar aids. I'm here to say that it is not acceptable at all if writers want to be taken seriously. I beg all commentators to please use proper English before it becomes a lost art.
Fred Speckmann
commonsenseforamericans@yahoo.com
Has zero to do with the US election cycle.
If the senate remains as it is, a small but real chance the administration can curtail US production somewhat.
If the Republicans control the senate and house both, that curtailment chance gets slimmer, and the possibility of increasing production further/faster becomes more real.
For example, higher odds of getting some pipelines built to ease the strain on road and rail for transport.
Good point. And different forms of energy run the factory that makes the stuff in the store.
(Of course the cost of gasoline pales in comparison to the amounts being wasted by all those paying interest to banksters who created the loans from nothing.)
Jan
Regarding not spending money, you can either spend your wealth, invest in means of production, or put it under your mattress as some people seem to do. As long as you don't put it under the mattress, you're contributing to growth.
My point is moot, though, b/c energy drives production of goods and services and investment in means of production.