Oil price and Putin

The last new oil refinery in the US was built in 1977 although many of the more than 140 refineries have upgraded to add capacity. There is a 20,000 barrel per day refinery under construction in North Dakota to handle the oil from the Bakken Range. The last nuclear power plant was built in 1996 and since that time the US has stayed away from nuclear. There was an accidental release of radiation from the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island in 1979 and that was enough to scare people away from nuclear facilities even though no one was hurt. While the Obama administration is bragging up the energy led recovery their approach has been to push renewables like solar and wind. They have yet to open federal lands to drilling. America's future as the global fossil-fuel king is a reality while Barack Obama's green economy is simply a fantasy. Fracking on nonfederal land has turned the U.S. into the top petroleum-producing country in the world, having passed Saudi Arabia in late 2012. The new production of oil and gas in the United States has had an effect on the world scene. The Obama administration placed a series of restrictions on the Russian economy as punishment for the Russian invasion of Crimea and Putin laughed these off. When the price of oil dropped to $60 he quit laughing and now Obama is claiming that his strategy worked when in fact it was the US production of oil that brought down the price and put the pressure on Putin.