Down 6.32% compared to this time last year, which means that less petroleum exploration is going on.
Presidents seem to always want to take the credit for the price of petroleum going down. They also eschew taking the blame, and correctly at that, when the price goes up. But because Americans are economic ignoramuses, this story repeats again and again.
Wyomingites tend to follow the price of petroleum as it directly correlates to jobs in the state. The price must be over $58.00/bbl for Wyoming petroleum oil to break even, and really has to be over $62.00/bbl for it to be profitable.
Today it's at $55.95 for WTI and $59.72 for Brent.
Oh oh.
That doesn't seem to have made the news, but it has started to impact the field.
Part of the reason that it is going down is that investors are worried about the Trump buffoonery in Ukraine, where he's siding with the Russians, and because the US has taken up seizing Venezuelan ships carrying oil. The latter might actually be justified for reasons having nothing to do with the murdering of drug boat crews, and it's interesting to note that the ship that was seized was seized by the Coast Guard, not the Navy which is relying on the Nuremberg defense for its actions in spite of the Government war manual actually referencing the murder of distressed crews as against the laws of war. On the latter, Americans have become so psychologically fragile since the Vietnam War that we can be assured former sailors will be reporting that they have PTSD due to their role as hitmen in a few years, but that's another topic. So, basically, Trump can take some credit for lower prices, but it's basically due to international investors figuring he's a rogue bufador, which he is.
Trump getting out his big box of GI Joes isn't the only reason, however. Lots of refineries completed turnarounds, which are scheduled years in advance, and OPEC has an oil glut, things that would be causing Democrats to claim that Harris had lowered the price of oil, had things worked out differently.
So here's the thing. How long will this slide go, and how low will it go?
Rumors, and that's what they are, are circulating that there's hopes that oil will go down to $30/bbl. I don't see how that can happen, absent an economic depression, and if that did occur, that's exactly what would occur in Wyoming.
For that matter, if oil stays this low, that's what's going to happen here.
I wonder if all the MAGA loyalist here will be cheering in that event?
If oil stays down around $55/bbl for about three months, the oil economy in Wyoming will be very badly damaged. Natural gas will prop some of it up, of course, and we really are more a natural gas explorating state now rather than a crude oil one. Still, crude is the rig count driver.
And if that happens, all the alternative energy projects which existed under the Biden Administration are drying up, the attack on them lead by the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and people like Chuck Gray. Coal prices are up, but not so much that anyone ought to be deluded enough to thinking that there's going to be a second era of King Coal. Meanwhile, the Freedom Caucus is gutting the state's ability to fund anything.
And that is probably where we should close. The Freedom Caucus basically would like the entire US to be a variant of 1930s Appalachia. If this trend continues, we may get to be.
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