Oil companies

Friday

Juan P. Villasmil

Will Venezuela invade Guyana?

Eight years ago in Guyana, an Idaho-sized country on the northern coast of South America, ExxonMobil discovered massive oil reserves. So massive, that it’s speculated that the tiny nation, which is one of the least densely populated countries on the planet, could become the richest country per capita. Estimates indicate that Guyana has around 11 billion barrels of oil equivalent, boosting the nation to the third position in terms of proven oil reserves in the region. To contextualize the enormity of these discoveries, consider that the tiny nation has almost five times more proven oil reserves than Argentina, a country thirteen times larger by land mass. Only Brazil, the fifth largest country, and Venezuela, the country with the largest proven oil reserves, surpass Guyana.

Guyana

Sunday

Lewis M. Andrews

How hating Big Oil undermines the environment

Today’s progressives like to imagine they're clever when it comes to engineering a carbon-free future. Yet when we look at the record, we see green policies yielding self-defeating public backlashes. The effort by California’s legislature to ban all gas-powered vehicles by 2035, for example, has wreaked havoc on the state’s economy. It's produced not only the nation’s highest energy prices and last summer’s rolling blackouts but the need to import expensive electricity from neighboring states. And while European governments would like to blame Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine for their countries’ high energy costs, angry voters know that prices began spiking years ago, when green activists forced the shutdown of coal plants across the continent.

Tuesday

Jonathan Bydlak

Democrats’ last gambit: a corporate windfall tax

Inflation continues to be the economic story of the day. While Democrats try to divert attention to the job market, and many Republicans seem more interested in appealing to “gut feelings” on issues like crime, the latest polling shows that rising prices remain top of mind for most voters. To the extent that the Biden administration is talking about inflation, it’s generally been to downplay the latest numbers (at least when not accidentally highlighting it with ill-fated tweets that take credit for historically high Social Security cost-of-living adjustments). But there is another talking point that some Democrats are taking as an alternative: big corporations are to blame, and windfall taxes are the solution.