Protecting North American Oil and Gas production and how to do it: The pros and cons.

Before I begin my argument here I would like to make clear that it's important for the world to continue to move towards as many alternative energy sources as possible including solar, wind, tidal and nuclear. This is an argument made in acceptance of the fact that our economies are dependent on fossil fuels to sustain themselves and simply will not be able to function without them at the present time.

There is no question that military interventionism in the Middle East has been dictated by the need for oil to fuel our economies and, in turn, this is providing part of a narrative to fuel resentment towards countries like the US, Canada, Europe and Australia that is fuelling terrorism against these countries.

In Europe, the dependence on Russia to provide us with fossil fuels has influenced the attitude towards Russia and a certain timidity in discussing Russia's approach to silencing political opponents of the government there internally and influencing former Soviet States such as Ukraine into submission through cutting off energy supplies.

Similarly we are guilty of abandoning principle entirely in our support of countries like Saudi Arabia in supporting them with arms in exchange for them trading oil in dollars, but also ultimately because while we are dependent on them for oil, our primary concern is the governments there are able to maintain control and stability to allow oil to keep being produced reliably and export it to meet our needs,

The dynamics of global diplomacy have shifted somewhat this year. The boom of shale oil in North America has relieved dependency on both the Middle East and Russia, which is a state of affairs that can allow countries that would otherwise might take a more principled approach to these things, such as more forthright diplomacy and carefully targeted sanctions on Russia to influence the thinking of Putin's government. OPEC has upped production and while this is also impacting Russia, and some argue that this is a Saudi driven move at the behest of the US to impact Russia, some are convinced that it's a move to drive North American offshore production and shale oil and gas out of business by making them uneconomic, in order to reestablish the control of the market by OPEC countries.

It should be observed that if OPEC succeeds in this and production outside of OPEC and Russia is driven out of business then we are back to where we were: Dependent on countries like Russia, Saudi and so on to meet the energy requirements of our nations.

As such, I think countries like the US and Canada, and to a much smaller extent countries like the UK, need to reflect on whether it would be a good idea to actually support shale oil and gas as a necessary evil to make sure that dependence on OPEC and Russia is neutralised to allow us to assert a more passive foreign policy as opposed to the more interventionist one where Western nations are the focus of anger in the Middle East rather than the governments in the Middle East.

As such, I would propose the following: That a minimum price be agreed with the industry in countries like the US and Canada per barrel to allow production there to be economic, and the difference between the global price and the minimum economic production price is paid by government to the producers in order to keep it in business and to avoid returning to the previous status quo. In turn, this could be financed by increased fuel duty at the pumps.

I appreciate that an increase in fuel duty is a very unattractive thing, but I suspect that once the maths was done, it would still be cheaper than what we had before the price plummeted last year. It's also important to note that OPEC cannot possibly sustain this overproduction indefinitely, which will mean they will have to give up their strategy of driving production by more expensive methods out of business. Once they admit defeat, prices production will have to return to more normal levels, the price will rise and production from deep sea platforms and shale oil and gas will be economic again, thus without any need of support.

This also has the added benefit of protecting jobs in the industry.

So there are a few factors to weigh up:
Benefits:

• Protecting domestic production keeps people in work, helping our economies.
• Maintaining domestic production allows our governments to adopt a more passive foreign policy.
• Less of our soldiers get killed
• Adopting a more passive foreign policy reduces the focus on us for terrorists.
• Our societies will be more peaceful internally as a result of being less of a target for terrorists.
• International oil prices will not be entirely out of our control.

Disadvantages:

• Negative environmental impact.

Ultimately though, it's a decision for Canadians and Americans to make as well as the countries that produce oil or gas to a smaller extent: Which is the lesser of the evils? It's up to you to decide. In deciding, don't forget that we're all trying to move away from fossil fuels anyway and I've no doubt you'll all keep pressuring your governments in the right direction anyway.