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Americans Rejoice At Lower Gas Prices
HughPickens.com writes Drivers across America are rejoicing at falling gasoline prices as pumps across the country dip below $3 a gallon. According to Sharon E. Burke while it's nice to get the break at the gas pump and the economic benefits of an energy boom at home, the national security price of oil remains high and the United States should be doing everything it can to diversify global energy suppliers. Ultimately, the only way to solve our long term energy problem is to make a sustained, long-term investment in the alternatives to petroleum. But October saw a 52 percent jump in Jeep SUV sales and a 36 percent rise in Ram trucks while some hybrid and electric vehicle sales fell at the same time. "This is like putting a Big Mac in front of people who need to diet or watch their cholesterol," says Anthony Perl. "Some people might have the willpower to stick with their program, and some people will wait until their first heart attack before committing to a diet—but if we do that at a planetary scale it will be pretty traumatic."
Nicholas St. Fleur writes at The Atlantic that low oil prices may also undermine the message from the UN's climate panel. The price drop comes after the UN declared earlier this week that fossil fuel emissions must drop to zero by the end of the century in order to keep global temperatures in check. "I don't think people will see the urgency of dealing with fossil fuels today," says Perl. Falling oil prices may also deter businesses from switching to energy-saving technology, as a 2006 study in the Energy Journal suggested. Saving several pennies at the pump, Perl says, may tempt Americans away from actions that can lead to a sustainable, post-carbon future.
Nicholas St. Fleur writes at The Atlantic that low oil prices may also undermine the message from the UN's climate panel. The price drop comes after the UN declared earlier this week that fossil fuel emissions must drop to zero by the end of the century in order to keep global temperatures in check. "I don't think people will see the urgency of dealing with fossil fuels today," says Perl. Falling oil prices may also deter businesses from switching to energy-saving technology, as a 2006 study in the Energy Journal suggested. Saving several pennies at the pump, Perl says, may tempt Americans away from actions that can lead to a sustainable, post-carbon future.
The jeep stats are way out to lunch and have nothing to do with low price of gas. Jeep has been the start of FCA for quite some time now, not just recently.
I miss the good ole' days when Slashdot was about technology, not navel-gazing bullshit about American politics and policy. :(
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
And about 90% of the difference is additional taxes that your government has placed on the substance -- so if you don't like it, whine to Parliament. :P
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
The world has gotten a bailout due to trillions spent on military forced stabilization.
I for one am boggled why some think they can change human nature. We consume. Start looking at how to adapt to climate change instead of some fantasy of avoiding it.
Which part? The part where he disagrees that buying a vehicle one can barely afford and has no practical use for can be equated with hunger, satiety, and metabolic levels, which are driven by instincts and at least 25 different chemicals in complex feedback reactions?
Recently I tried the BBC Fuel Price Calculator, which for where I am at $2.55/Gallon indicates that the only place I can get gas cheaper is either Nigeria or Venezuela.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Where petrol costs ~£4.60 per US gallon =~ $7.30. About 60% of that price is tax, take away that tax you get about $3.
I do not like expensive petrol, but I do realise that we need to cut the amount of carbon based energy that we use - climate change might not affect me, but it will my kids.
With a policy like that in place, there won't be an economy left to worry about within a few years. The ultimate payer of ALL taxes is the individual; $7 per gallon charged to a business will be computed into costs of products and passed on to the purchasers of such products. The weight of such insane taxation would be colossal. Sounds like you want people to make rafts and abandon the country.
The Saudis are bottoming-out the price of oil to punish marginal north American oil producers, and the Russians
Partly. But their main target is Iran. Iran is hurting under the sanctions, and is under a lot of economic pressure to cut a deal on their uranium enrichment. The oil price drop is turning up the pressure big time. Nobody fears a nuclear Iran more than the Saudis, not even the Israelis.
If Iran reaches an agreement with the P5+1 on uranium, then expect the price of oil to rebound quickly as the Saudis shut off the spigot.
In UK, the gas taxes pay for the roads. In the USA, gas taxes cover less than half, with the rest coming out of general taxes. And the US has about four times the length of road per capita than the UK does. It is not that UK gas taxes are low, it is that US separates tax source from target to avoid discouraging driving. Remember, what's good for GM is good for America.
No, in the UK, the petrol taxes go into a large pool of money called the treasury, which is used to fund all the things the country does. This is true of pretty much all national taxes. The same is notably true of "Vehicle Excise Duty" (note, *not* road tax), which contrary to popular belief, does not give you more right to use a road than someone who hasn't paid VED, nor does it mean that you have "paid for the road".
You realise that this is pretty much exactly the policy that most of the prosperous areas of Europe use, right? This is why US fuel costs about 2/5 of what UK/French/German fuel costs.
Start looking at how to adapt to climate change instead of some fantasy of avoiding it.
The way to adapt is by retiring the internal combustion engine.
Paying attention to Jeep and Ram sales doesn't really say a whole lot. Jeep has the largest number of smaller - yet non-toy - SUVs of any manufacturer right now; some of the other manufacturers have been reducing their line-ups. Similarly while the Ram trucks haven't changed much in the past decade the other manufacturers are changing their trucks which shifts demand around.
You need to look at industry-wide sales stats to have a sense of what the sales numbers are doing. You need to also look at it against annual averages, as a sales uptick in the fall is not unusual when businesses are looking to finish their fiscal years.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The problem is that the price of an SUV does not reflect the cost of you owning one. Petrol prices go some small way to correcting that, so it's bad when the correction factor is reduced.
It's a real cognitive problem. It seems like you personally buying an inefficient vehicle has little overall effect, but collectively it massively increases healthcare, cleaning and military costs.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
2 minor nits.
1. Hummers are no long being made.
2. Most F-150s are sold as work trucks. Also, F-150 is one of the more efficient work trucks out there.
"This is like putting a Big Mac in front of people who need to diet or watch their cholesterol," says Anthony Perl.
Should Big Macs cost more to dissuade their use? What about the people who couldn't afford better than a Big Mac? Switching away from the analogy: inexpensive energy is the biggest benefit to poorer members of society. It means cheaper food, cheaper heating/cooling, cheaper transportation. When someone says "make energy source X cost more than energy Y because Y needs a chance to succeed", they're not thinking about all the costs associated with the rise in energy costs.
Germany is not the United States. Everyone pointing at Europe seems to miss one large difference: there's a whole hell of a lot more room between people and places they need to go in most the United States than in Europe. If you live in Massachusetts, half an hour is a "long drive," but if you live in North Carolina it can easily be how far away Charlotte or Raleigh or Greensboro is. If I want to visit an area with a lot of large shops and restaurants, I'm looking at a 30-mile drive at a minimum; 40 miles if I want to go somewhere that actually has American corporate icons like Barnes & Noble, Starbucks, Best Buy, etc. Taxing fuel at such an astronomical rate will certainly lower the amount of fuel use, but how many businesses will have to shut down because customers can't afford to blow $14 on fuel that they weren't spending before just to patronize those businesses? How much will the cost of items on eBay, Amazon, and other e-commerce sites increase? Someone who lives 30 miles from work because they can't afford housing any closer than that could be paying an extra $70 or more a week in fuel costs just to get to and from their jobs. The worst part is that people who would be considered "poor" are the hardest hit by this sort of feel-good taxation. In a country with a dismal record of low economic upward mobility, the last thing we need is to punch everyone in the financial face while they're already struggling to move up the ladder at all.
How about the effects of such a tax on, say, diesel fuel for the carriers to bring stuff from west coast ports to this side of the country. None of this deals with the serious problems we have in this country with rampant abuse of tax money. $7 per gallon worth of fuel tax that the corrupt politicians get to freely play around with? No thank you. Perhaps if our election cycles were not so widely spaced out so that we could throw the bums out faster, it'd be different.
According to most economists people are going to stop driving and wait for gas prices to get even cheaper.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
> Perhaps all the morons buying hummers and F-150s
Wven the four-door SuperCab version of the F-150 gets real- world 23.5 in road tests. Do you have a more efficient way to haul things, or are you spouting off without having any idea what you're talking about?
You can base your opinions on facts, or you can base them on what a Comedy Central comedian tells you to think. Your choice.
1) The Jevons paradox comes to mind.
2) I still believe population is generally the key factor. Although it will never happen, without population control the hole in the bottom of the energy bucket will just keep getting wider and wider.
Every time you fill your gas, please write a check for twice as much and make it payable to the U.S. Treasury. Until you are willing to put your money where your mouth is, shut up.
Here is a map of the countries that subsidize fossil fuels:
http://www.iea.org/subsidy/index.html
They tend to be oil-producing countries with otherwise-weak economies.
Prices determine resource allocation. If you increase gasoline taxes, you discourage gasoline use. This has a variety of ripple effects, including to increase the value of urban relative to suburban real estate (and increase urban rents), and encourage investment in wind, solar, etc. There are winners and losers.
(I believe we should increase fossil fuel taxes; it's the textbook way to price in externalities. It is exactly what a free-market approach to the environment looks like.)
You mean, the ones that are back into a recession with no sign of how they're ever going to get out?
Well, duh. WTF did you think would happen? People don't want to pay more for cars they buy today to save a few bucks in gas at some point in the future; particularly if they're leasing.
The fuel economy mandate is just another lame attempt by the left to force people to buy crappy little econocars that they don't want to buy. Because the left know what's good for them better than they do.
If by "flooded" you mean "failed to artificially restrict" then, yes. It's interesting in that the oil producing nations have, at times, been able to collectively meter their output to keep the money flowing in. Of course, at $100 a bbl there's no need to cut back, and several states are strapped for cash so they're less interested in putting the screws to the non-oil producing nations as they are putting cash in their pockets, rockets in their launchers, and food on the table. As a result, the market is floating as it would in a normal competitive marketplace.
Actually, if the US really wanted lower gas prices all the congress would have to do is forbid the export of oil products (or tax it at a significantly high rate), keeping the domestic supply here. The US is the world's largest exporter of refined oil products (diesel and gasoline chief among them) - we pay high prices at the pump because we ship so much to other countries, who are willing to pay for it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Check a map.
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To those who want a standing army of over 4 million active service and support staff rather than a domestic defense force, please get out your checkbooks and send your portion of the 1.2 Trillion Dollars we spend on the military every year. I, personally, think we should be able to defend the 4M sq miles of land we have with the same money that Russia spends on its 7M square miles. And that means those few who want all that extra military need to cough up the 90% of that 1.2 Trillion that we're over spending.
When that happens, I'll have the money chip in a few extra bucks a gallon at the pump for better roads, bridges, public transportation subsidies, and the like.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
You make a convincing argument.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Many geologists claim that the amount of oil recoverable from shale deposits is vastly overestimated by shale oil entrepreneurs. Early this year the EIA decreased their estimate of the oil recoverable from the Monterey shale formation by 96 percent. Certainly there is a large discrepancy between reserves claimed in SEC filings vs. that claimed in public statements.
I wonder if there is a self-interest in operation here?
If the SEC filings are correct we only have a few years of oil from shale in our future. Production will be well into decline by the end of the decade.
If you have a long term market outlook it's something to think about....
Cooking for one CAN be a hassle, for sure. I find it often works well to do a middle ground- microwave a frozen burrito, and toss fresh cheese, onions and tomato on top, or whatever I have on hand. I always have cheese on hand because it goes on so many things and is much better fresh than frozen. Similarly, I'll take 30 seconds to toss some ramen in water, then add whatever to make it good. That takes less time than going to McDonald's and costs $300/month less.
> to get something even mildly similar to a big mac.
I was specifically addressing the topic of eating fattening food vs willpower and the question "what about people who CAN'T AFFORD better than a Big Mac". I'm comparing the Big Mac to healthier food, not to a homemade Big Mac. Healthier food costs less than McDonald's food, so people aren't eating McDonald's because they can't afford healthy food.
Trivia fact regarding the Big Mac:
A Big Mac is $4. A McDonald's double cheeseburger with Mac sauce is $1-$1.50 and it's almost exactly the same thing.
but collectively it massively increases healthcare, cleaning and military costs.
The United States sources the lion's share of her crude oil from western hemisphere sources. Most of these have friendly relations (Canada, Mexico) with the United States, are domestic (off shore) resources, or come from countries (Venezuela) that talk a big game about how horrible the Yankees are but continue to do business with them.
China, Japan, and the EU are the major economies that are dependent on Middle Eastern oil, which begs the question of why they aren't the ones spending their blood and treasure to try and stabilize the region. In the case of the EU and Japan it's an unwillingness on the part of their populations to engage in such adventures, combined with the fact that they have no need, since the United States is willing to do it for them. In the case of China it's a lack of power projection ability combined with the trepidation the West and Japan would feel if China started intervening in the region. Personally I think we should let them have a go at it; it would give the radicalized elements in the Middle East someone new to hate, at least for a little while.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Next time try a front wheel drive with decent tires. Safer and better than a 4wd in anything other than steep / deep (ie, on roads).
4WD vehicles have this funny habit of breaking all four tires loose at the same time. Front wheel drive vehicles tend to break the rear tires first, allowing you to control the vehicle with the fronts. Anyhow, it's mostly tires and driver.
4WD SUVs are fun to watch flip over. The combination of an icy road, a 4WD, a bad driver, some speed and the laws of physics can be pretty entertaining.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Your definition of "middle class" is probably a bit too broad on the low end. Outside major cities, and even within many of them (such as Philadelphia), many of the poor own cars. And to them, price of gas is very significant.
On the contrary, I know quite a few people that currently and formerly live(d) in Massachusetts, though none of them live or work in or very close to Boston. I didn't want to get into the composition details of Massachusetts, though; the larger point is that while people in some places in the United States can afford to use fuel-saving transportation, the majority of places in the US are not those types of places. Most of the land in the US is rural; most of the people in those areas can't just hop on a bicycle or drive an electric car to get where they need to go. That also brings another point to mind: a $7/gal. fuel tax will hit local farmers and significantly increase the cost of food throughout the country, though imported food from countries with no such tax would not suffer the same impact. We could just get all of our vegetables from South America, I suppose.
>>>Canada is a huge ally and trust worthy
I don't know about that. Have you seen Canadian Bacon?
Uh...unable to control their "willpower" when buying a car?
Someone I know buys cars "because the salesman talks so nice". She sometimes goes to those things where dealers give free stuff, but sometimes says she's afraid to go because she might end up buying a car. Occasionally, she hands the phone to me and asks me to tell the salesman on the phone "no" for her, because she doesn't want to be rude.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Hi there, reality check here.
This is how petroleum prices are managed:
When the oil and gas industry wants fuel prices to be low they optimize the fuel supply chain and keep petroleum flowing so the supply meets demand.
When they want fuel prices to go up, they burden the supply chain to increase demand. One of their favorite tricks is to pilot their fuel container ships to about 20 miles off the coast of port and park them there, waiting for fuel prices to go up.
Fuel prices are managed much like department store sales.
Department stores gradually increase the price of popular items until customers stop buying, then they have a "sale" where they reduce the price of those items to the normal retail price.
Then they start to gradually drive up the prices again.
The petroleum industry does something similar; gradually drives prices up until consumers start to look into alternative fuel measures by stifling the supply of petroleum. Then when that point is reached they have a "sale" where they optimize the supply chain.
Your average consumer sees this as a modern miracle instead of researching to find out why the price went down, and they celebrate by driving, flying and using power sports vehicles more than ever.
Every time the supply chain is stifled the lowest price for petroleum notches upward a little bit to prevent customers from dumping petroleum but raise the overall price at the same time.
More than 250,000 UK citizens have been killed by cold temperatures, despite how inexpensive energy is. To the extent people advocate against inexpensive energy, the death rate will increase, and the victims' [frozen] blood will on he hands of the advocates.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Whenever I buy a car, I build a spreadsheet to compare Total Cost of Ownership for several different models. One of the inputs, of course, is the price of fuel.
If that variable goes up, I am steered toward a more fuel-efficient vehicle, and according to Anthony Perl, I "have the willpower to stick with the program." But apparently I should banish that factor from my spreadsheet if the price of fuel goes down, lest I be steered toward a less fuel-efficient vehicle, and become guilty of a huge characater flaw.
In the overall total cost of ownership, you will blow more money buying that car brand new than you will likely ever spend on fuel for it, so if you're buying new, you're already throwing away thousands.
Secondly, I hate to say this, but fuel economy should not be a factor in buying or NOT buying an SUV or truck. That should solely depend on your needs. Period. You either need a gas-guzzling SUV or truck, or you don't. It's that simple.
I mean, an addiction to large overpriced SUVs that never touch dirt or mud is clearly an addiction spiraling out of control that we should probably earmark billions in taxpayer money.
You're being sarcastic, but Dubya took real action toward that end.
You misspelled accurate.
Most people who own high-end off road capable vehicles never take them off road. They paint the beds of trucks now, so naturally people don't want to get a scratch on it by actually using the damn thing...
Is that a rational fear; is an Iranian nuke more likely to be detonated in Riyadh than Tel Aviv?
It is unlikely to be detonated in either place. Iranians don't want nukes to attack their neighbors, they want them as a defensive deterrent. Once they have nukes, they will have more freedom of action to push their interests in other areas, such as backing Syria, and promoting Shiite unrest in the Western Gulf (Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Gulf Provinces), etc. Most countries that have developed nukes in violation of the NPT have been richly rewarded. India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel, all have security, respect, and deterrence. The guys who cooperated, and gave up their nuke programs (Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi), are dead.
" Questionable technologies like CVT and direct injection, and mis-application of turbocharging made modern cars significantly less reliable than what was produced just 10 years ago." -- holy crap, you got any stats to back that up? Because according to Consumer Reports and the car enthusiast magazines (Road and Track, etc.) cars are better than ever now. I personally own a nine-year old SUV with a CVT (2006 Highlander Hybrid) and a 19 year old car with a turbocharger ('96 Volvo 850 Turbo) and have never had any problems with those components. Do you want to go back to 'reliable' carburetors and point-type ignitions, I guess? Anyone who says older cars were more reliable (like from the good old days of the 50's and 60's) doesn't have much experience owning and working on them. Posting AC because already modded this thread..
High taxation as a cause of the fall of civilization is a myth.
Not a myth at all. True, it's not a certainty, but high taxes have often caused societies to fall to civil wars, outside invaders, or simply to decline relative to lower-taxing societies. I highly recommend For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization by Charles Adams for an overview of this.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
You want to solve the obesity issue ? The fix is rather simple, remove the added sugar. It's easy to avoid the obvious stuff, not so easy when damn near anything purchased in a store has some sort of added sugar in it.
Challenge: While avoiding the organic isle, walk through any store and look at various items and note how much of it contains sugar. It's in quite a few things you wouldn't even think of.
Eating a block of it once per day, or eating smaller amounts of it several times a day equates to the same intake. Reduce the sugar, and you fix the problem.
The way to adapt is by retiring the internal combustion engine.
People driving around in cars is only a tiny part of it. You could stop everyone from driving a petroleum fueled car right now, and it would make little or no difference. Heavy industry, HVAC in homes and businesses - that's what does it. The solution is nukes or one form or another. Solar and wind can't put a dent in it, and China's not going to stop putting a new coal-fired power plant online EVERY WEEK any time soon. Cars have got almost nothing to do with it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Enjoy your tax freedom now, because if electrics really catch on they'll figure a way to tax you for it. Hopefully something simple and mileage-based rather than something requiring a government GPS unit in the car. In my area electricity is over 18c per kW, so you'd be paying more here.
Until then, hey, I don't mind. If there were charging stations around here I'd have considered the Tesla.
The thing that drives me nuts over the whole AGW thing is that it is a distraction from the real reason we need to embrace renewables - fossil fuels are non-renewable and will be depleted in hundred years or less. We're passing peak oil now and we're on the downhill slide. Screw the environmental aspects, the socio-economic aspects are what are going to kick our asses if we don't get in gear soon. We have time to shift to a renewable energy infrastructure, particularly for transportation, but cheap gas slows progress in this regard. Gas will be inexpensive until it costs three of your newborn children for a gallon - it will be a quick hockey-stick exponential cost increase. At that point we will have weeks to build a new infrastructure that really requires decades to implement and must start now. AGW might actually be a thing, but unfortunately it is based on predictions of the behavior of a wildly chaotic non-linear system, so no one will really know until it happens. We'll be out of fossil fuels before we know for sure. The economic impact is the argument that both the blue and red sides might agree upon. Or not.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Start looking at how to adapt to climate change instead of some fantasy of avoiding it.
The way to adapt is by retiring the internal combustion engine.
Yes, then we can charge up our poisonous battery powered cars from coal.
But we are also supposed to stop burning coal, so I guess we will charge them from nuclear power.
But Congress shut down Yucca Mountain, so now nuclear power is not sustainable as we cannot safely store the radioactive waste. Instead, we should use wind, water, and solar power to charge them.
But wind, water, and molten-salt solar generators kill animals, require toxic emissions to mine the necessary rare earth metals, and don't generate sufficient power for the world's needs.
Thus, the only remaining solution is to reduce the earth's population back to a sustainable level: Will you volunteer?
No? Then I guess we'll both have to go back to the drawing board and think up a practical solution.
The guys who cooperated, and gave up their nuke programs (Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi), are dead.
Or not doing too well, esp. the Ukraine.
They even got US and Russian promises that "nothing bad will happen, we promise. Cross our hearts and hope to die" and all that...
Stefan Axelsson
I had a quick search to fact check your post, and it doesn't really seem accurate. It seems 12.9% of oil comes from Persian Gulf countries (i.e. the Middle Eastern nations where war is a problem), whilst 14% of European oil comes from the same place, so there's little in it:
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/...
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/art...
The gulf is bigger for Africa (US 5%, EU 21%) but apart from a temporary foray into Libya for a few months the nations in question aren't nations where there has been any Western intervention for a long time.
Which isn't to say EU's energy purchases aren't a problem, as the whole Ukraine crisis has shown the EU needs to cut dependence on Russian gas and oil.
But ultimately your claim that the EU should be stabilising the middle east because it uses more oil is basically false, given there's a mere 1.1% gap in purchases between the EU and US from the major problem areas in middle east where American blood keeps getting spilled.
Your argument is irrelevant however, it's a distraction, an attempted play on technicalities to avoid the real reason it's always the Americas that end up the middle east- it's not about oil consumption, it's about oil control. America doesn't keep meddling in the middle east because it consumes their oil, it meddles in the middle east because it wants it's companies to profit from production of that oil, and to control who gets to consume that oil.
The EU isn't engaging in the middle east as much as the US is because EU foreign policy hasn't been so focussed on controlling the flow of oil and building it's economy on the basis of taking control as much of the global oil and gas market as possible.
You mention China also, which is a similar case, you talk of lack of power projection, but that's not true- China's power projection just isn't military, it's economic. But whilst the US spent the last decade bombing Iraq and Afghanistan China spent the same decade courting under-developed African nations to build up their infrastructure and to exploit their resources- whilst America went to war to control the oil already being pumped, China invested in just pumping new oil in as yet untapped markets by funding production of wells, road, telecomms infrastructure and so on and so forth. It's been pretty busy:
http://www.businessinsider.com...
It's also interesting if you look at some of the widely available pre-2010 maps- you'll see there's barely a section of Africa that hasn't been touched to the tune of billions of dollars by the Chinese in the last 10 - 15 years.
So your misdirection was a nice try at excusing America from the problem, but it misses the very reason America isn't excused from the problem - America isn't there because it's the good guy doing the EU, China and Japan a favour. It's there out of choice because it has created and intertwined itself in the problem because it views that as a key part of it's global power projection priorities. It realises that messy military agreements and dealings with the Saudis may not net it much oil because it doesn't need it from them, but it does mean that US companies can rake in billions from helping exploit those resources whilst also providing it's military companies with lucrative defence contracts to defend those investments.
It's the very nature of the fact that America's power projection is military that's the reason it's always engaged in wars unlike China with it's economic power.
This is also in part why Saudi Arabia is more than happy to help keep oil prices low at a time when fellow OPEC members like Venezuela could be pushed to the brink of collapse by low oil prices- partly because Saudi gains in seeing a competing major oil producer crippled for a