MIDLAND, Texas — We've seen the price of oil rise and fall on numerous occasions, but this time, it's different.
According to the president of Latigo Petroleum, Kirk Edwards, the price we see for a barrel of oil might actually be misleading.
"Even though people see on your little ticker on channel 9 the $25 oil price today, that's not what they're receiving in the field. For the month of April or May, it could be like $5 a barrel," Edwards said.
Edwards says that the West Texas area is dealing with attacks on multiple fronts: COVID-19 as well as Saudi Arabia and Russia flooding the U.S. market with cheap crude oil.
"That's what is so smart about the Saudis and the Russians: to launch their war on oil at the same time COVID is happening so nobody will see it. The energy producers will scream, but everybody's listening to the COVID answers right now," Edwards said.
"The Saudis and the Russians are doing their best to put out the people in the Permian Basin right now out of the industry because we've gotten so good at what we do. We're producing so much more oil than we ever have out here and they are directly attacking the Permian Basin."
As the industry that drives our economy, this could have disastrous results.
"We could easily lose 100, 200 thousand people with the fallout from this just because of what's going on in the flooding of these markets right now," Edwards said.
So is there a solution? Edwards and other industry leaders hope that by calling on the Texas Railroad Commission and the Trump Administration, a solution can be found.
"He could do some things through tariffs. We could do something in North America, and we have Canada and Mexico that we buy a bunch of oil from. Along with our current oil, we could be self-sufficient with the refineries in Texas, and we could have our own little micro center for just North America and maybe that’s the way we need to go in the future," Edwards said.
Even if a viable solution is put in place in the coming days, it could be months before our region would have to ability to recover.
"When are people going to feel good about getting on an airplane with somebody right next to you? Is it going to be this summer? Are you going to feel good about driving a car to go to meetings and things like that? So its going to take us a while to tippy toe back in to get the economy back up that's using more energy for jet fuel and gasoline, and that's gonna be the big what if over the summer: when we do start to see this taking place again?" Edwards said.
With our country still importing foreign oil, Americans are losing jobs. Edwards says that we have to put America first and stressed we have to use our own crude oil before foreign crude oil.
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