Saturday, April 9, 2022

Increase Production?

If you consider the Republican efforts, if any, to control inflation, it is basically to punish workers and reward big corporations who are profiting from the situation.

Some elements of inflation are external to this country, but others are not.   For example, American oil companies could reopen closed wells and increase the supply.  They say they are too expensive, but they have a good economic reason not to.  If a barrel of oil is selling for say $70 and it costs $40 to produce it you get a profits of $30 for each barrel.  If the price goes to $100 you are making $70 a barrel.  Say you produce a million barrels that's 70 million dollars.  Suppose you can double the production and drive the price of oil down to $70.   The new production drives the cost of production to $50 (these are the more expensive wells) only make 20 a barrel and at 2 million barrels you make $40 million dollars.  

Oil executives know that $70 million is more than $40 million so why open up those wells.  Since these same oil companies have bought up most of the available leases, expect no help from them.  In fairness they couldn't justify it to their shareholders.

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