• mwguy
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    22 days ago

    At what point will a naked war for resources with Saudi Arabia make sense? Like if a leader went to the EU/America/Japan/Korea and said, “we’re gonna take the Saud’s oil and sell it for $25/barrel to everyone that helps us for 25 years.” And then we went to the public and said, “25 years to get off oil for good” when does that ship?

      • mwguy
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        22 days ago

        The issue with the Gulf Wars is that we wanted to control the oil resources via local proxy. Honestly, we (the US, I realize this is on the Europe@) could use our Navy to directly control about half of Saudi Arabia’s oil and buy ourselves time to get off oil.

          • mwguy
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            21 days ago

            The Saudis don’t have a Navy. About half their reserves and a massive chunk of Iran, Kuwait and the other Gulf State’s reserves are in the Gulf. We don’t have to set foot on the Peninsula.

            • bacondragonoverlord@feddit.org
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              21 days ago

              Neither does Ukraine. Still decimated the russian navy.

              Also to nip this whole “argument” in the bud, and I’m not even going into how terribly colonialistic your proposal is, how many billions of euro would you propose to put into essentially propping up a already dead technology. Fossil fuels have to be eliminated by 2050. Why wage war for something we won’t even need in 25 years.

              We WANT to increase fossil fuel prices. To hasten the change to renewables, the higher the potential savings the better.

              • mwguy
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                17 days ago

                Fossil fuels have to be eliminated by 2050. Why wage war for something we won’t even need in 25 years.

                I don’t think that fossil fuel usage will be eliminated in 25 years given the opposition to mass nuclear deployment. I think this would ideally be a carrot that dictates green energy buildouts in exchange for subsidized oil.

                • bacondragonoverlord@feddit.org
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                  13 days ago

                  My dude, but essentially that’s whats already happening. No energy is cheaper than renewable energy. Every process we thus electrify and use renewables is not using fossile fuels.

                  Thus we have less of a need for subsidized oil.

                  • mwguy
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                    9 days ago

                    My dude, but essentially that’s whats already happening.

                    Yes but it’s happening with Natural Gas as the baseline power generation method. Which is much better than oil or coal for carbon emissions, but it’s not green.

    • Foni@lemm.ee
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      21 days ago

      The issue is that currently, the cost of extracting oil exceeds $25/barrel. Personally, I would be glad to see the Saud family ousted from Arabia, as there are countless reasons to consign those disgusting Salafists to the dustbin of history. However, reducing the price of oil at this moment is not feasible.

      • mwguy
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        17 days ago

        This analysis is from 2019 and it doesn’t break down the cost difference for onshore vs. offshore oil. But it estimates the cost for the Saudi’s at $8.98/barrel (approximately $11.01 in todays dollars).

        Do you have the analysis where it says $25+/barrel. It is certainly possible that production costs have risen significantly in the last half decade.

    • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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      21 days ago

      Turns out people really don’t like being ruled over by nakedly colonialist regimes, and when people really don’t like things they tend to blow stuff up, and when people blow stuff up, it hurts the bottom line of oil companies, i.e. the only thing you care about for some reason.

      Do you want to create a second Iran? Because that’s what happened there.

      • mwguy
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        17 days ago

        That’s why we don’t take all the oil, just the offshore oil. It’s significantly more difficult to conduct terrorism when you have to swim to it.

        • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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          17 days ago

          Ah yes, the sea, a place famous for how difficult it is to get away with crimes. I see no flaws in your plan. The seas around the Arabian Peninsula specifically haven’t had any notable activity from anti-Western rebel groups in 2024.

          Here’s a completely unrelated graph:

          • mwguy
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            9 days ago

            How long do you think they (the Houthis) can keep it up?

            • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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              9 days ago

              Well, let’s see, they’ve been fighting the Saudis (backed by the US) for the last 20 years, and your brilliant plan to subjugate the region involves attacking their main enemy, so I would say, a pretty long-ass time.