Guest essay by Eric Worrall
After shutting down pipelines right and left, frightening investors with climate extremism, threatening or implementing new taxes and tougher regulations, and banning new leases on federal land, the Biden administration suspects foul play may be driving up the price of gasoline.
President Biden calls on the Federal Trade Commission to look into whether “illegal conduct” is pushing gas prices up
BY SARAH EWALL-WICE
NOVEMBER 17, 2021 / 5:32 PM / CBS NEWS
As gas prices soar across the United States, President Joe Biden called on the Federal Trade Commission to look into whether illegal conduct is driving up the cost of gas prices for families. Americans have seen rising costs, from prices at the pump to shopping at grocery stores.
In a Wednesday letter addressed to Lina Khan, chair of the FTC, Mr. Biden called her attention to “mounting evidence of anti-consumer behavior by oil and gas companies.”
“The bottom line is this: gasoline prices at the pump remain high, even though oil and gas companies’ costs are declining,” Mr. Biden wrote. “The Federal Trade Commission has the authority to consider whether illegal conduct is costing families at the pump. I believe you should do so immediately.”
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Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gas-prices-biden-federal-trade-commission/
The following is a copy of Biden’s letter to the FTC:
I’m pretty sure I remember an economics unit in which the professor explained that if you choke off the supply of a commodity, with new taxes or punitive regulatory attacks on availability, the dot moves up this curve thing, resulting in consumers paying higher prices for less.
Perhaps President Biden needs an advisor who studied economics.
Biden is doing his job – covering for the FED, Wall Street.
What people notice at shops and the pump is called INFLATION.
Who wud´a thunk?
Expect exactly this tactic to spill over the Atlantic to Brussels, where NordStream 2 was put on ICE, even when ready to pump.
Expect a Gazprom Knew , a theatric Exxon Knew retread on winter tires.
Expect hyperinflation, a replay of 1923, after insane liquidity pumping (not gas) by the FED since 2019. As FLOP26 utterly failed to secure a gigantic green bubble of $150 TRILLION, sheer panic is breaking out – see the threats of The City of London’s Economist against those who refused the offer of economic suicide.
Actually Biden does address the stock buy-backs but not the reason that happens – the FED insanity. That liquidity never reached the physical economy.
Meanwhile Belarus cut gas pumping in response to EU sanctions. Speculators warm up, the rest freeze. Prices on the spot-markets are such fun!
Does Biden have any mirrors in his residence?
Purely to deflect flack he and the dimbo’s are getting via polling
Price controls will fix the problem.
Textbook definition of gaslighting. PS The irony of the very word “gaslighting” could be a separate essay…
A wicked solution. A handmade tale with “benefits.” That said, there is no mystery in sex and conception. But, I suppose, all’s fair in lust and abortion.
Here is a full readout of Biden’s chat with XI, given to the Brookings Institution :
https://www.brookings.edu/events/readout-from-the-biden-xi-virtual-meeting-discussion-with-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan/
The answer is
POOPY PANTS
EXTREME DEMENTIA
If Joseph
StalinBiden can nationalize the oil companies, many problems are solved. Gas won’t be available at any price. This is step 1 in that process.Just remember, Xiden may have dementia but the people behind the scenes aren’t dumb, they’re communists. This is all by design.
It’s just a way to shift blame and make people mad at the oil companies instead. Unfortunately it’s working with many.
The frightening part of this is that the current administration probably does NOT understand why gas prices are going up. They have no concept of how capitalism or any market economies actually work. Just as they do not understand inflation – so they want to print more money to stop inflation.
Most of them have never had to make payroll out of their own pockets. They get taxpayers money on a regular basis to pay bureaucrats and don’t have to use their own money. They would have no idea how to run a small business.
Biden’s FTC move is being justifiably ridiculed in many places, not just here. Akin to asking OPEC to increase production while cancelling the Alaska drilling permits and Keystone XL.
Stolen elections have consequences. In this case, not good for Dems in 2022.
Get settled children, I have a lovely fairy tale to send you to sleep.
Covid, struck.
Everything was locked down… not for two weeks like Saint Fauci said, but for two years! So far.
Bad things happen in the dark, when people get locked out of work and roil in FEAR.
Society stumbled.
Oil prices cratered, reaching a low of minus $40… briefly (it was costing more to keep it on ships than the cargo was worth… sell at a loss).
Shale players stopped pumping oil… not profitable… no predictability.
Exploration and drilling stopped.
Then, ‘he who shall not be named’ cancelled the XL gas pipeline, the first days in office.
Gretchen, the wicked witch of the mid-states, threatened to close off a pipeline through to Ontario and Quebec.
Quebec resisted letting a pipeline through to the eastern provinces (let the ‘bast….s freeze in the dark’). Time for regrets?
Predictably the price of oil started to rise from its lows of $50 up toward $70.
Then, ‘He who cannot be named’, decided that there would be no drilling or fracking on Fed. lands (national parks) including Alaska.
Europe had a bad year, and needed Russian Nat gas. Russia obliged, but didn’t turn up the spigot enough to satisfy them. They scrambled for energy.
A hurricane hit the gulf… as they do… and oil production dropped… for months.
Oil prices rose.
Gasoline prices rose.
Politicians began to panic. People don’t like high gasoiline prices. Not good for the image.
Appeal to OPEC. Pretty please ‘Omar’, “please pump more oil to bring the price down.”
‘Pound sand… idiot. We like these prices. Why should I produce more to bring prices down?’
COP 26 in Glasgow… We gotta get off Fossil fuels.
Developing world… ‘give us a trillion dollars, first.’
Idea… ‘lets release oil from the strategic reserve since no one else wants to play ball’.
Shale players don’t like that kind of vacillation either. Hold off pumping oil, this is too unpredictable.
‘Oh, and lets backtrack over what I said earlier about cancelling that black ‘gold’ stuff, and let oil companies bid on leases in the Gulf. There are several billion barrels of oil there. Okay, so the courts made it happen, not me, it will still work… in about a few decades.
‘And, I talked to Xi, this a.m. He’ll release from his strategic reserve, if I release from ours.’
Let’s see if that will work to get me out of this mess I created… so what if he releases only ten barrels to my few million. It will look good and we (him anyway) will save face while he laughs at me… again for the clown I am.
Europe is still having a bad year… they’ll need more energy… nat gas, for heating to keep people alive.
Let’s see… what else can I screw up? Oh, oh, I gotta…
Ma! Ma? Does a fart have lumps in it?
First, there’s no chance Joe Brandon will get good economic advice from anybody near him. Jennifer Granholm, the energy adviser who smells so good, tells Joe that U.S. oil production can’t haha possibly haha affect the price of a global product haha. Kamala, who smells good but is never around, tells Joe haha it’s all good haha (she brings depth). Joe vaguely thinks “price go up bad”; but those around him are very happy with it, so have some ice cream, sir!
Once more illustrating the left’s disconnect from economic reality.
Also illustrating the need for fossil fuels that the left claim not to want.
Of course there has been foul play: it was Trump wat dun it!
It’s just profiteering!
I mean, who does Evil Big Oil think it is, expecting to actually make a profit on gas! Don’t they know their insistence on not providing oil and gas for free is causing people to buy LESS gas, and that means less gas taxes to Government?
It’s just not fair. NOT FAIR!
One sign of the onset of senility is a failing memory.
Apparently, Joe has forgotten quite a few, relatively recent FACTS:
“In total energy consumption, the US was between 86% and 91% self-sufficient in 2016. In May 2011, the country became a net exporter of refined petroleum products. By 2014, the United States was world’s third largest producer of crude oil, after Saudi Arabia and Russia, and second-largest exporter of refined products, after Russia. In November 2019, the United States became a net exporter of all oil products, including both refined petroleum products and crude oil. By 2021 the US was the world’s largest producer.”— source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_energy_independence (may underlining emphasis added)
So, Joe, look to what and who caused the US to now be blaming rising gasoline and heating oil prices on “cutbacks in production from oil suppliers in the Middle East”, the current meme being circulated by politicians to satisfy the sheeple.
Nord 2 was put on hold until ownership is transferred to Germany.
Sure. Defund the Police. Then. Defund the Oil Companies.
Same solution same result.
Joe, if the price is too high why not sign an executive order? Make the price $2 a gallon for gas. With gas now $2, shut down Line 5 for Whitmer.
But his proposed commissar of our money supply did get a degree in economics – from the Soviet Union.
I know how popular it is to blame a Democratic US President for swings in gas prices, and it certainly makes great political fodder for Republicans heading into the 2022 mid-term elections. But data matters, as do facts.
Worldwide oil production in 2019, just before COVID hit, as well as through all of 2018 and 2019 remained within a narrow range of 81-83 MBPD.
Worldwide oil demand remained relatively stable at about 99-100 MBPD during that same timeframe. If you’ll recall, President Trump was in office at that time.
Then COVID hit in the spring of 2020, and worldwide oil demand plummeted to about 91 MBPD – a nearly 10% sudden reduction in demand within a world wide market that lives or dies on tenths of a percent variations in supply vs. demand.
Worldwide oil production also took at hike at the same time, for the same reason – COVID induced crash in demand – dropping from just under 83 MBPD to just over 70 MBPD. That also occurred during Trump’s term office. Prices at the pump were the lowest they had been in nearly a decade,
Since the spring of 2020, worldwide oil demand spurted from 91 to 96.5, while completely unsurprisingly, oil production has lagged behind because investors and producers had cut back production in 2020. So now prices at the pump are at a decade high (meaning they use to be as high or higher a decade or more before either Trump or Biden were in office).
This is otherwise known as the “law of supply and demand”.
It’s not Presidential politics, or Presidential policy that cause this result, before 2020 or after. It’s the markets, responding to external events that upset the finely balanced supply vs. demand of oil.
It isn’t Biden direct policy that is responsible for all of it – but Biden’s policy definitely reflects a 1% limousine liberal movement to demonize all fossil fuels. This includes ESG, attacks on coal, etc etc.
Thus to say none of it is Biden’s fault is technically correct but it is equally true that Biden’s policies are responsible – since said policies are extensions of the Democrats’/Limousine Liberals views.
“responding to external events” such as shutting down pipelines, changing lease terms, stuff like that. But not policy. Got it.
Joe Biden drove a new Ford Lightning Electric Truck and told everyone on all news channels how great it was. Joe Biden did not drive a new Ford F250 Diesel.
That’s proof positive that Presidential Politics are picking and choosing winners and losers. To claim otherwise is disingenuous.
The bottom of the demand was in March 2020. The rebound to current 96 MBDP occurred by October 2020 and has stayed relatively steady for a year. So why not ramp production back up? A large part of the reason is Presidential politics and policies.
Where were you in 2019? Covid didn’t hit in 2020, it started in 2019! That was when everyone was telling Trump that he’d never have a vaccine in five years. yet by the end of 2020 he was seeing 1M vaccine shots per month!
I love how the far left likes to rewrite history.
Duane,
I am again very confused about you oil posts.
You state that demand was about 18% greater than production in 2018 & 2019. That is a crapload of oil that appeared out thin air (or was taken out a very very big reserve?)
Then you say (with the COVID crash) that the demand is more than 20% more than the production.
Prices should have skyrocketed (per the Obama hope & change).
Then you reference the Law of supply and demand like it supports your statements.
You are very confusing.
confusing. Yes, that’s a polite way to say it Don. Because “innumerate loon” is not quite so polite.
I was thinking more along the lines of ‘lying McGinnley’.
Seems to want to be your buddy in areas that really don’t matter, but spews lies and misinformation on very specific subjects.
It’s not just shutting down drilling permits, banks are stopping capitalization of new drilling even on private land. They don’t want to be caught by Treasury of not supporting green policies. Let everyone eat cake, if they can make it!
Bill Gates Thorium salt reactor coming to Wyoming …
Bill Gates-backed nuclear reactor heading to Wyoming coal town (msn.com)
Sure, this time the MSR nuclear reactor that will save mankind—in additional to curing lumbago—is positively, without a doubt, swear to God, not kidding, most assuredly “just around the corner”.
Why, heck, even Bill Gates is backing it and we all know how smart he is . . . NOT!
Sounds like ol’ Bill is taking his cut of the “infrastructure” swindle.