[throwaway5752]

It's a terrible sign this can't stay on the front page of Hacker News. In theory this should be a smarter than average group of people.

Short term, your gas price went up 4% starting tomorrow and we are going to see how resilient our computing infrastructure is to an actual cyber offensive with destructive intent (rather than simple information theft or monetary theft/ransom). Medium term the odds of a war with substantial US casualties has increased substantially. Long term it's possible this will be seen as the tipping point for PRC as the dominant global power. This is a historic event and not in a good way.

[dirtyid]

PRC (and many other countries, western allies included) depends on Hormuz security for oil, US doesn't need ME oil anymore thanks to domestic shale. This maybe hobble China in the short-term, but it will take the rest of the world with it.

[throwaway5752]

The US is an enormous importer of oil. We import 8 million barrels every day. And that is priced internationally. Do you think CCI and Mayan priced markets aren't going to sell us crude at a discount.

[dirtyid]

US is the largest oil producer as of last year, they're on the way to being net exporter, they mostly import and finish Canadian oil. US is energy secure as of last year, which is why they've been so emboldened in ME. I do agree that cyber attacks and other costly blowback is on the horizon. This is certainly extremely troubling development.

E: Sorry account seems to be rate-limited?

US net exported crude and other petroleum in September and is projected to be sustained net exporter in the next year. I'm not suggesting they are completely inoculated against global energy market shift, but they have nominal guaranteed energy security because USNavy can protect all those transit routes. Whereas China, Japan, Korea, most of Europe with limited blue water projection capabilities would struggle very hard to maintain ME oil access if Iran decides to start tanker wars in the Hormuz.

[throwaway5752]

This US is nowhere close to net crude export. We export refined products and NGL. We have reduced dependency on ME crude, yes, but Mexican and Canadian market are priced internationally and are not captive sellers.

edit: to discourage deep threading they don't show the reply button in a thread for a cooling off period.

edit 2: the "US net exported crude and other petroleum [products] in September" statement does not appreciate "other petroleum products" part. The US imports lots of crude from Mexico and Canada (and the ME), and export the refined products because of the US's very large refining capacity and pipeline/terminal infrastructure. We also create NGL as a fracking byproduct since the lighter fractions don't have the domestic demand but can be collected and shipped in economically. This isn't even getting into the tail production economics of a fracking well and if it is viable long-term. In any case, the September news isn't as positive as it sounds.

[nicholas73]

Canada is fairly captive...

[_y5hn]

smart != wise