[ceeplusplus]

> And we thought things were bad in the US.

That inflation is mostly driven by energy costs, which are a direct result of European policy failures on nuclear and fossil fuels. The US is mostly a net neutral producer/consumer of fossil fuels and energy, which is why it's insulated from the impacts of Russia cutting off gas.

[mikeiz404]

From an energy security standpoint being net neutral or better is good but is the US insulated from fossil fuel prices?

From a market perspective I would have thought a decrease in supply (say sanctions on Russian oil) would up the price of oil. This would effect domestic oil prices as well since either the domestic producers also participate globally or other sources of oil available domestically are also available globally (higher global price would decrease domestic supply and thus increase domestic price).

If domestic policies are put in place which limit access to the global market then that would change things.

[stu2b50]

Not fully insulated - US oil prices should also go up when marketplaces as a whole does. However, the laws of physics indicate that domestic markets are still cheaper to supply to - if it is at all possible (and LNG is more quite a bit expensive than pipelines).

Furthermore, a super strong dollar when US oil production is sold in, of course, dollars makes other parts of the world that want to purchase more US energy in lieu of Russian energy pay top dollar for it compared to domestic customers.

[ceeplusplus]

> is the US insulated from fossil fuel prices?

To a large degree, yes [1]. The US is affected by oil prices globally, but if OPEC decides to cut off the US it wouldn't have the same effect that Russia is having on the EU right now.

> also participate globally

In crises, the US has the option to restrict exports. The EU does not have that option because it is not a net producer of fossil fuels.

[1] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/natural-gas-p...

[mikeiz404]

Wow, that chart is quite compelling.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

> From an energy security standpoint being net neutral or better is good but is the US insulated from fossil fuel prices?

The US as an economy is mostly not effected by fuel prices anymore.

But the average US consumer is - that's probably the important part.

[UncleOxidant]

But the average US consumer is a big part of the economy - if they're effected, then how is the US economy not effected?

[stu2b50]

If the US consumer is buying from US producers, then it is just money bouncing around domestically. You could argue that from a birds eye view, the US economy as a whole, at least on a national scale, is minimally affected.

That being said, I can't agree with the parent post, it's not that symmetric.

[kbenson]

Doesn't that assume that those local producers are only using local resources? It's very hard to be insulated well in this day and age. Livestock feed price is up. Fertilizer price is up. Equipment shipping costs are up, when they aren't hard to come by. (I can provide sources, but I just googled price of those over time and found charts supporting it easily enough).

Its very hard to be really insulated from higher fuel costs, even if it's produced locally. You still need to ship it to a refinery, and then ship it back out to gas stations. Unless you run a farm where you get all your inputs locally and they are also trying to use only local inputs, you're going to see these price increases. Many of the economic inputs people use for production, whether that be food or built items, have gone up, and often there's only so much they can do to insulate from that.

[sleepdreamy]

Hey Sorry to follow you!! I am deeply curious on your knowledge.

[colechristensen]

Yup. A big thing in past decades was energy independence. The US actually achieved it but it didn't get the attention that griping about not having it got.

[wffurr]

I mean sort of. If fuel prices are still at the whim of global markets, does it matter if the country is a net importer or not?

Electrification with domestic electricity supply seems like it would provide much greater security. Though there's still the global markets for all the electronics and materials and such for renewable generation.

[colechristensen]

>If fuel prices are still at the whim of global markets, does it matter if the country is a net importer or not?

But they are not completely at the whim.

With a nontrivial lag time, as prices raise, local (especially North America as a whole) production will go up and NA will become a significant net exporter. The shale and tar sands production is considerably more expensive than other production methods and requires high prices (and predictions of long term high prices) to operate successfully.

We are coupled, but not entirely dependent. The local price will be progressively lower compared to global price as global price rises. Being able to overproduce our requirements enables this.

If high prices significantly (for some sufficiently high level of significance) threatened our local economy or supply actually limited people's ability to buy at any price, controls can and would be enacted to decouple the local price and economy from the global market.