I paid a small fortune to fill up my car yesterday... but I haven't heard of anyone going to a gas station and the pumps being dry.
I don't want to hear Joe Biden this and Joe Biden that. There's no shortage of gas, and no one's stopped buying any. Oil companies are booking out record profits, they're not moving forward on their drill permits, and they're not reopening the wells that they shut in two years ago.
And Joe Biden doesn't have fuck all to do with it. We're being played. This is a failure of capitalism itself... or not. It depends on how you look at it. If you're the oil company, it's working just fine.
I don't have a opinion about any coming hurricane, some anal-lists just like scary stuff to scream about, perhaps overblown purposely so that if something comes, it won't be as bad to handle and we would be prepared instead of blowing it off. But note this line below... It's also opec and the other middle east groups working with US to restrain all production by 20 - 25%. They are no where back to 2019 levels. They don't want to be and your point about them being aware about continued change over and less demand for gas products probably is already showing up in a loss of a few percent of a percent of loss in profits. Any loss to them is a hit in their wallets at home.
So maybe big oil is trying to get us used to their new high priced mindset of 5.50 is the new 2.50 a gallon price. Actually the oil companies are playing mind games by calling what they're doing 'increasing' production, when in reality they are bringing it back to pre levels. If US oil was producing 15% of the worlds oil in spring 2020, then slashed all production, drilling and refining by 8% down to 7% outflow, bringing it back to 11% is NOT increasing your production. 18% would be increasing. See the weasel wording? And don't forget the double whammy that unlike middle east where citizens get a direct low price on fuel, the US exports up to 80% to other countries and the US citizens do not get any breaks and then we get states charging gas tax for roads which the oil companies pass on to the citizen, except maybe texas. Which is it's own middle east. Texas, where they kill their own with covid and ar-15's but give them a lower gas price to do it.
Gas prices were already climbing before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the Ukraine invasion. That's because during the pandemic, when gas dropped below $2 a gallon in the US, producers and refiners slashed output by almost 40%. Some refineries even closed permanently. When the economy started recovering, they were slow to ramp up to previous levels. Then Russia, a major oil producer, invaded Ukraine, and oil prices soared even higher. Production in the US has increased, but not enough.
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