Biden Seeks To Force Down Gas Prices With New Sales From Nation’s Oil Stockpile

President Biden on Wednesday used the presidential podium, and the power behind it, to harangue oil companies about the nation’s high gas prices and to attempt to shield his fellow Democrats from the ire of voters feeling the pinch at the pump just weeks ahead the midterm elections.Mr. Biden announced that his record-setting drawdown of the country’s emergency oil stockpile — the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — would continue, and possibly even accelerate in the coming months “if needed” to bring down the prices Americans are paying for gas. So far during his administration, Mr. Biden has sold 230 million barrels, or about 35 percent, of the reserve in his effort to tamp down gas prices.“With my announcement today, we’re going to continue to stabilize markets and decrease the prices at a time when the actions of other countries have caused such volatility,” Mr. Biden said.During his brief statement, Mr. Biden blamed the high gas prices on the “actions of other countries” and on President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, along with oil companies that he said were raking in record profits at consumers’ expense. That the policies of the current administration toward oil and gas exploration and fossil fuel companies in general might be playing a role in the current crisis went unmentioned. Mr. Biden said the existing strategic reserve, which now holds more than 400 million barrels of oil, is more than enough to have on hand in case of an emergency. Nevertheless, he said his administration would begin replacing some of the oil it is now selling when prices drop below $72 a barrel on international markets.The last time the reserve was replenished was during the first quarter of 2020, at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, when oil was trading for around $24 a barrel. President Trump asked Congress for money to add even more to the reserve at the time, but the request was turned down for being what Senator Schumer, the majority leader, called a “handout to big oil.”Mr Biden denied that his efforts to strong-arm oil prices were politically motivated, but Republicans in Congress were unconvinced.“The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was built for a national energy crisis — not for a Democrat election crisis,” the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Senator Barrasso of Wyoming, said. “Joe Biden is draining our emergency oil supply to a 40-year low. His dismal approval rating is not a justifiable reason to continue to raid our nation’s oil reserves. The surest way to bring down energy prices is to unleash American energy production.”Mr. Biden spent much of his short statement berating oil and energy companies for spending their sky-high profits on stock buybacks and not passing them on to consumers in the form of lower prices at the pump. He said his plan to buy oil to refill the strategic reserve at what amounts to a price floor would shield them from volatile price fluctuations and give them the confidence they need to increase domestic production.“My message to the American energy companies is this: You should not be using your profits to buy back stock or for dividends. Not now, not while a war is raging. You should be using these record-breaking profits to increase production and refining,” Mr. Biden said.While the price of crude plays a big role in the price of gas, oil industry analysts say it is not the only factor. Supply and demand is another factor, and supplies that were hobbled during the pandemic have yet to catch up with a demand that rose faster than many expected in the pandemic’s aftermath. Refinery costs are another big driver, and the Biden administration’s antipathy toward fossil fuels has made that business costlier than ever.On at least half a dozen occasions during his statement Wednesday, Mr. Biden stressed that his administration is determined to continue down the path of snubbing fossil fuels in favor of renewable sources such as wind and solar — “accelerating the transition to clean energy,” as he put it.Encouraged by climate extremists in his party, Mr. Biden has made it clear from day one that his administration wants to usher in a Green New Deal that favors renewables over traditional energy sources. An executive order he signed during his first week in office halted all new oil and gas leases on public lands and offshore waters, tightened up federal permitting policies, and ordered federal agencies to end tax subsidies for fossil fuel projects in favor of renewables.The policies, energy industry advocates say, led to an unprecedented slowdown in domestic oil exploration and development that is contributing to the current high prices. The administration also has increased taxes on energy companies, discouraged banks from financing new fossil fuel-related projects both at home and abroad, and reversed many efforts at deregulating the industry initiated by Mr. Trump — all in the name of blunting the impact of climate change.In an interview with the Financial Times last week, the CEO of Chevron, Michael Wirth, said the current obsession with climate change by energy policy makers in both Europe and the United States is running into an uncomfortable reality.“The conversation [about energy] in the developed world for sure has skewed towards climate, taking affordability and security for granted,” he said. “The reality is, [fossil fuel] is what runs the world today. It’s going to run the world tomorrow and five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now.”

Biden Seeks To Force Down Gas Prices With New Sales From Nation’s Oil Stockpile

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