Quote:
Originally Posted by WTF
Yes we do....but you have to go back to the dynamics of the day. Not today.
Carter spending on the military (which winn dixie will not acknowledge) might not have been so horrible with the Cold War still very chilly.
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You're referring to market dynamics of natural gas when Carter was president. OK, Carter was before my time, but I did get an up close and personal look at the results, perhaps like you would have gotten for oil if you worked in strategic planning for Enterprise in the 1980's. Carter managed to perform a difficult feat, both raising the price of natural gas to levels where it became difficult for people to pay their heating bills, while at the same time discouraging investment in development of natural gas resources. He did this by price controlling wells drilled to shallower depths, up to 15,000 feet. Gas from wells drilled deeper than 15,000' could be sold for whatever the market would bear. And the market had to pay up, because shallower wells weren't being drilled. The natural gas producers couldn't make money given the low prices per MMBTU, set by the government for shallower wells. They could on the other hand make money from outrageously expensive deep wells, and they passed their high costs onto consumers.
Add to that a system where major gas pipeline companies were encouraged to charge as much as they could for natural gas because they were monopolies and were guaranteed a fixed percentage over their costs. The more they paid for natural gas, the more money they made.
Carter was of the opinion that the USA was going to run out of natural gas. He turned out to be dead wrong on that, at least during our lifetimes. With fracking and horizontal wells, the USA is now the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.
And if you think this was a sorry situation, just wait until the Democratic Party institutes some kind of Cap and trade system for CO2 emissions. Unfortunately, the majority of Democratic politicians don't have faith in free markets and are inclined to meddle in ways that make us poorer.