Energy Independence and Analysis

The revolution in production of unconventional oil and gas in the United States is no doubt an important development for the economy. But it also has been accompanied by a lack of analysis. Case in point, Sunday's NYTimes piece on the "Dark Side of Energy Independence."  The authors, editors at Foreign Affairs, argue that increased US production could lead to a 50% reduction in oil prices, and then analyze the effects of this on oil producers elsewhere.  They point out that:

lower energy prices will undermine the stability of the Persian Gulf monarchies, whose hefty oil revenues have allowed them to win their populations’ loyalties through patronage and a lack of taxation. These countries do not always share American values or help advance American interests, but anything that destabilizes them would create problems that Washington could not afford to ignore.        

What is amazing about their argument is that they never consider how oil producers will react to lower oil prices. They do not consider the impact of $50 per barrel oil on the profitability of unconventional producers. If prices fall in half which oil projects are likely to be cut back? Presumably those with the highest costs. 

Nor do they consider how OPEC producers might react to this increase in oil production from elsewhere. They could, cut back their production, as comments from Saudi oil minister, Ali Naimi, suggests. But if OPEC cuts back then why would prices fall in half? Alternatively, facing lower prices desperate countries might increase production causing a further fall in prices, as Michael Levi notes. 

But the key point to remember is that unconventional production of oil and gas is a response to high oil prices. As prices fall the projects that are cut back are those that have the highest marginal cost. Failing to consider this is an invitation to faulty analysis.

Energy Independence

Robert Higgs has a nice column on the folly of the notion of energy independence. Suppose we substitute bananas for energy:

If we were talking about bananas, everybody would see immediately the foolishness of seeking “banana independence.” Nobody would fall for half-baked arguments about our addiction to foreign bananas or our love affair with banana bread. It’s obviously uneconomic to grow millions of bananas in this country; it could be done, but doing it would entail much greater costs than buying them from producers in places better suited to their production (that is, places where they can be produced at lower opportunity cost).

The argument with regard to oil, or anything else, is identical.

Moreover, even if we produced all our own oil (or bananas) we would also have to erect a wall to prevent exports if we truly wanted to be insulated from what happens elsewhere. Oil is relatively easy to ship, so if prices rise elsewhere they are going to rise here as well unless exports are forbidden.

I think Higgs is wrong, however, when he writes:

The U.S. government may wish to exercise hegemony in the Persian Gulf so that politically well-connected big oil companies can reap a bigger share of the handling income from producing and transporting the Gulf oil (but if these companies didn’t perform these tasks, other companies would do so).

This confuses the source of oil company profits. Big profits arise when world oil prices rise because the companies produce oil as well as buy from OPEC. Hence, they earn rents on the oil that is produced at lower cost than what they must pay OPEC producers. They are the indirect beneficiaries of price increases because they have inventories of the commodity as well. Of course, if OPEC produced at full bore and drove prices down they would lose since most of their low cost oil was produced long ago.