It isn't like when I was growing up and US companies were the only real players in the world oil market(all of the rest of the players being nationalized Ex-American holdings). This is the best reason yet to develop nonfossil fuel energy sources. There are too many players in a market that can't really expand anymore because there just aren't many resources left to exploit.

As a country the US is looking more and more like an engineered products company that's been forced into a commoditized market. All that deep knowledge and industrial base isn't an advantage with a well known, simple process that any other company can master in just a few months. It's just overhead. Now we find out if the accountants get to "cut costs" and turn us into just one more low cost manufacturer that only runs processes designed by it's betters.

It's time to either move on to something else and master it before the rest of the world or get used to a less exalted lifestyle. This doesn't apply only to energy, but energy is the key consummable right now and will be for the foreseeable future.

Now there's a new Great Game in town -- with China and India the players who appear to hold the cards.

Of course they hold the cards. The U.S. has been giving them its own cards.

I think, offhanded and without going to wiki, the British empire began altering the course of India's future as early as the seventeenth century.

Give all the oil to them so we don't have to worry about that filthy carbon spewing evil capitalist colonialist product. We don't need it because we're evil and should be punished. Plus the divine sunlight of our moral highground should light and heat the way on our glorious path to blogger heaven.

Oomex, Andrew's correct. The British East India Company conquered Bengal from an already rump Mughal Empire in 1757 and then defeated the dominant Maratha Empire in 1821, after which it gained control of the numerous principalities which comprised the erstwhile empires. With independence in 1947, whichever date you use for the beginning of British exploitation, the period of British dominance lasted less than two centuries.

when China & India finally become the dominant world superpowers that they will be nicer than the US, Soviet Union & Britain was back in the day.

"the British empire began altering the course of India's future as early as the seventeenth century.

The statement is factually correct. The East India company worked for the Crown, and began to alter the social and political fabric of India long before the Empire began the colonial enterprise there. Britain was shaping India at least as early as the 17th century. Look it up.

Yeah, Arcelor-Mittal (India) might bid for Alpha, which has agreed already to be taken over by Cleveland Cliffs. That won't fly, because the US gatekeepers will quash it. There are other deals out there, waiting for application of all those dollars we've willingly heaped on them. If they buy it, they will come. Hey, Kevin Costner: here's a new movie idea!