The Oil and Energy Macro | Art Berman
The Oil and Energy Macro | Art Berman
U.S. oil reserves reached a new record in 2022. Crude oil and condensate proved reserves exceed 48 billion barrels (Figure 1). Reserves declined from 1969 to 2006 then increased with additions from the deepwater Gulf of Mexico and Tight Oil. Tight oil accounted for 27 billion barrels (56% of total)…
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"There can be little doubt that Russia intended to permanently damage Europe’s economy." -- got it almost right. It's the US that killed two birds with one stone: attack Russia and Europe's manufacturing and industry.
whats americas incentive for attacking europes manufacturing and industry?
Eliminating a competitor, causing a long-lasting disruption of relations to Russia, China, Iran et al and causing migration of energy-intensive branches of industry to the US. Bleeding vassals via comprador administrations is the prequel to domestic self-cannibalization. Latter being arguably also already in progress.
Perhaps i overestimate USAs friendliness with eurozone. I kind of just worked with the assumption that keeping europe solid was in USA national interest but i dont really know at any moment what special interests have their tentacles in the deep state. I figured blowing up the pipeline was to target russia with the european energy situation damage just being "collateral damage". I kind of have doubts usa elites were even clever enough to realize it would shift energy intense industry to usa. Hard for me to parse the malice and stupidity
My general theory is that yes this was true for the Cold War era when there was a "trilateral" system of the USA with arms in Europe (what eventually became the EU) and East Asia (Japan, SK, Taiwan, etc) against the communist bloc. But since the 2000s, right before the GFC the EU was getting to be as big GDP as the USA and turning into a serious competitor and with more viable productive industry. Ever since then, I think US policy has been to harm the EU more and more. The US wants subservient allies, not self-sufficient ones. Alienating EU's energy ties to Russia has been more damaging to European industry than to Russia thus far. And as far as I can tell US oligarchs mainly care about the Ukraine because of the agricultural potential of that land and the US policy of controlling world food supplies. Supposedly some millions of hectares of Ukrainian land have already ended up owned by various Western companies like Cargill or Bayer (not sure if this has been proven but I'd not be surprised).
I think we are already at the catabolic collapse stage where the elites are cannibalizing the periphery before the heartland. On the other hand the US has been also being stripped bare in patches for a while. So it is a simultaneous progressive process.
The US utilizes internal colonization of majority-minority communities and via the use of highly exploited migrant labor. The US seemingly stripping itself bare comes down to the process of internal colonization reaching a very high level. The homeland is a series of highly developed metropolitan islands in a sea of deindustrialization and poverty.
Nicely put. I fully agree with this description.