Ross: If only we didn’t have to care about the world’s fuel supply
Sep 16, 2019, 6:43 AM | Updated: Sep 17, 2019, 7:33 am
From a video broadcast on the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya satellite news channel, smoke from a fire at the Abqaiq oil processing facility fills the skyline, in Buqyaq, Saudi Arabia Sept. 14, 2019. (Al-Arabiya via AP, File)
(Al-Arabiya via AP, File)
It was an audacious attack on the world’s fuel supply.
“Saudi Arabia confirms the Abqaiq refinery and Khurais oil field, the country’s second biggest, were both hit by drone strikes,” a CBS report states.
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There is some fogginess over who’s responsible – but Iran is an obvious suspect, since there’s an embargo on Iranian oil sales, and they would certainly be motivated to throw a sucker punch like this.
But here’s the real problem: 10 cheap drones – in a few minutes — could cut Saudi Arabia’s oil output in half.
Fortunately the US now produces so much oil that the jump in prices should be moderate and it actually makes US oil producers richer.
I just hope our own oil facilities are better protected, because this could give bad people ideas. There is pretty much nothing as fragile as an oil refinery.
And also, I can’t help but think about Senator John McCain’s appeal to climate deniers back in 2007. He was arguing that even if all the science is completely wrong, using less fuel was worth doing so that we wouldn’t have to care so much about every hiccup in the oil supply.
Imagine – if today, our cars were getting 80 miles to the gallon, this story wouldn’t even have made your paranoid uncle’s Facebook feed. Of course our cars would have to be shaped like salmon. But I could get used to that.
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