Today’s Wall St. Journal reports that Chevron is driving to increase its production of oil and gas, especially in deep water wells in the Gulf of Mexico, in order to compensate for the collapse in oil prices. That is typical of the historic boom-and-bust cycles of the oil industry.  And how much is fracking responsible for the collapse in oil prices?

The same WSJ article reports: “Meanwhile, smaller companies have moved faster, poking enough holes into US shale rock-formations to deliver about 3.5 million barrels of oil a day above 2010 levels. That increase, almost as much crude as Chevron and Exxon Mobil produce combined, has added fresh capacity to the global oil market and contributed to the nose-dive in prices.”

In other words, the more they frack, the more the oil prices drop, and the more those prices drop, the more oil they pump to compensate for the low prices. Meanwhile, California is beset with its fourth year of severe drought while the North East is experiencing a tremendous blizzard. To say nothing about drought in Brazil, etc.

Capitalism and global climate disruption, anybody?