US ‘Energy Independence’ Is Real, ‘Global Prices’ Are Not: A Short-Term Oil Production & Price Mitigation Plan

US ‘Energy Independence’ Is Real, ‘Global Prices’ Are Not: A Short-Term Oil Production & Price Mitigation Plan

A color lithographed Victorian era sheet music cover (by Henry Eno) to promote the discovery of ... [+] petroleum, New York, New York, 1864. (Photo by Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images) Chances are you are hearing two claims with great frequency these days. The first is that the US is energy independent where oil is concerned. The second is that oil prices are 'set globally,' so that there's nothing that we can do about presently war-wrought price-spikes at gas stations. These claims are mutually incompatible – 'independence' and 'nothing we can do' do not hang together. They can't both be true unless there is some catch, some sleight-of-hand hidden in one or both claims. Happily, there is a catch. It's in the second claim. The 'so that' you find there is fallacious. It suggests a 'natural' causal nexus that is actually an institutional causal nexus. It is a function of arrangements we presently leave in place by choice, not by necessity. The significance of this fact cannot be gainsaid right now. To see what I mean here, start with the first claim we hear – that the US is energy-independent where oil petroleum products are concerned. There is a nontrivial sense in