Explaining oil

Up now on ForeignPolicy.com we have a great interview with Amy Jaffe on energy. She’s one of those rare analysts who’s really good at breaking things down for non-experts. And since she’s in Houston with the Baker Institute, she actually talks to energy industry executives. All that adds up to valuable insight. Read the whole thing. I found her thought on U.S. offshore drilling to be particularly interesting:

Politicians and the media are all pointing to Brazil as a success story. But Brazil is going to be energy independent not because they have a small but successful ethanol program. They are going to be energy independent because they had a massive offshore drilling program which has more than doubled their oil production from 650,000 barrels a day in 1990 to 1.6 million barrels a day now. So when we consider drilling in the United States, we have to ask ourselves; “What are people afraid of? Why don’t they want this drilling?” Brazil has a tourist industry that is focused on beaches too. U.S. reserves we are talking about are so far away from the beach that you wouldn’t be able to see the offshore platforms.