The Hard Math of Soft SLOC
I was just old enough to remember as a grade schooler the last significant political disruption of the free flow of oil at market; the oil embargo of 1973-74, right when the world got close to nuclear war as the Soviet the US fleets jockeyed about the Med and between the ‘72 and ‘75 North Vietnamese offensives (yes, there have been scarier times in living memory).
There were minor disruptions during the various Iraq related skirmishes of the last 32 years, but nothing like the shock of ‘73.
But here we are in 2023.
Almost all of our strategic petroleum reserves was sold off to the People’s Republic of China.
We produce enough for ourselves - especially if we husband a portion of our exports - but our global economic partners outside North America do not. That is where the danger lies.
Take a moment to start this week to think about the second and third order effects of the below should things not go a productive way.
Ponder.
Pouring oil onto the troubled waters of the Gulf, Red Sea, Malacca Straits, and South China Sea is not going to bring us any smoother sailing. We are in for rough seas. Every time someone opines that we intervened in the mid-east strictly for our own (oil) good, they are shortsighted. We did so to keep the world moving. All of it.
That is in gravest peril now. Once, our Navy kept things fairly even keeled. That is well nigh "over and done"
what to do? what to do? what to do?
The Front Porch here knows; we need to spread the word.
The current administration has made massive mistakes in energy policy from day one. They have dithered and played divest-to-reinvest games with the Navy since day one. Why would we expect them to take prompt, decisive action to fix either of those???