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Comment by fisherjeff | Hacker News Reader

In addition to that, I'm not sure what the benefit is to energy producers - oil prices are already not far above a 15-year low and domestic crude production is at a 25-year high, currently almost 10% of global consumption.

Even without subsidies or other incentives, I just can't see where the demand comes from to drive significant oil supply increases. I'm genuinely curious what the restrictions are that are throttling our energy industry.

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> I'm genuinely curious what the restrictions are that are throttling our energy industry.

"Environmental regulation". Who needs clean air or water. Superfunds Sites are cheap to clean up right?

Superfund sites are expensive, and that's exactly why they're great for the economy.

Might as well do the "pay people to bury money in coal mines and let people dig it up" then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

I don't know exactly, but there are probably oil reserves in places like Alaska that would be cheaper to extract if it were allowed.

That's my guess too, but large numbers of new drilling sites - especially remote ones - would drive up costs while simultaneously helping to keep per-barrel prices low. Just sounds like a terrible ROI to me.

Well, I don't really expect this to cause oil extraction costs to go up. I don't think companies would waste money choosing more expensive drilling sites. But this could also signal an attack on local regulations too. It would make a big difference if local fracking bans were made illegal. Texas did that.

Yeah, I don't see an effect on extraction costs, I was just talking about the significant up-front capex costs in what looks to be a historically slack market.

Very interesting thought regarding local regulations; hadn't considered something like that at a federal level. It does also occur to me that this could just be a convenient way to make the opening up of large amounts of protected lands more palatable to the general public.

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