Emails today showed me oil was at $44.66! It’s getting closer to $50, which may be the magic number. The price at which the oil companies will stop laying off people. The price at which they might start thinking about how they’ll manage to continue working without having the people to do the job.
I’m sure most people are happy to see the price of oil so low. It certainly helps at the gas station (tho prices are no where near as low as they should be if just depending on the price of oil)! I’m happy to pay less at the pump too, but for all the people like me who’ve been laid off over the last year, it hurts. It hurts bad.
I’ve read that somewhere around a half million people have been laid off since the price of oil started dropping. That’s a lot of people forced to cut back, sell assets, into bankruptcy. That’s a lot of people shut out of good paying jobs and into minimum wages (if any).
I keep wondering when things will stop hurting and start getting better? I don’t think anyone really knows. Some pundits say oil will go to $14, others think it will go back to $100+.
I don’t want it to go to either of those extremes. I’d be happy with $70-80. That should be enough to put everyone back to work and keep it affordable at the pumps too. 🙂
Capt Jills Journeys 
Not a comment, a question. I have no basis for even venturing an educated guess but I am curious, what do you think would happen to oil prices and to your industry if the US truly committed itself to energy independence?
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I have a few theories, but I’m not really sure about anything to do with that subject. IMHO, I think if we got serious about energy independence, we would have a HUGE fight between the liberals/conservatives for a start! From what I heard when the fracking was going strong, we would have enough energy to support us for over 200 years! Of course there are problems with tracking, environmental for one (I don’t know enough about that to say one way or another). Most of the tracking is done on land rigs, so wouldn’t help MY industry at all. MY industry is maritime.
The US has VERY few ships left! Less than 300, we have 7 maritime universities, each turning out over 300 licensed officers per year. Where can they all find jobs?
We do have a lot of smaller vessels, tugs, OSVs, dive boats, ferries, etc. That is where most of the work for mariners is at in the USA. A lot of that work is in the offshore oil fields.
Supply boats (OSVs), crew boats, standby boats, IMR, construction, ROV, etc. All of those boats depend 100% on the oil companies.
If we started working more on alternative energy- fuel cells, wind, current, geothermal, hydro, solar, etc- I think oil prices would drop and my industry (maritime) would shrink drastically.
I’m not looking forward to loosing my ability to find work in my chosen profession, but I am trying my best to deal with it.
It would help a LOT if I could get at least ONE damn computer to work! I’m at McDonalds again just trying to catch up!
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Thanks for the insight. Last year my grandson graduated from Texas A&M, Galveston, with a degree in Marine Biology. He then returned to the waitstaff job that helped him through college. It would seem that soon the only “marine” job left will be in the Marines.
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I agree, they are destroying what’s left of it for us right now. There may still be some work left for the Philipinos and Indians who are able to work for peanuts, but for US and other ‘high wage’ mariners, it’s all but finished.
Your grandson would be better off figuring out how to earn a living on his own. A friend of mine with a marine biology degree started her own business doing embroidery and is doing very well. He needs to ‘think outside the box’! Like all of us do, if we’re going to survive.
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Someone recommended your blog so i’m checking it out. I’m a patch worker in Canada and between low oil prices and the forest fires its estimated 150 to 200k workers unemployed in a province of 3million.
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thanks for checking it out, I hope you like it! So sorry to hear about all that going on up there. Not bad enough to lose your job, but also having to leave your homes and everything else behind. I hope they can put out the fires and things can start going back to normal for you all up there.
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It looks like not happening for 3 years or so. We are 1 year into an NDP government that is very anti oil and gas. They are saying anything damage by the fires will have to be reviewed under their new rules prior to rebuilding. Since they put a moritorium on oil dands permits it’s likely no one will get permission to rebuild till after the next election.
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sorry to hear that, it looks to me like all of our governments are in cahoots to force the people into dependency (and thus easy to control them). But that may just be my tin hat conspiracy theory. 😉
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