They accomplished this through policy: On Biden's first day in office, they had him sign an executive order canceling the Keystone XL pipeline despite the fact that over the course of more than a decade the companies involved in the project had spent tens of billions of dollars, all for nothing.
He also signed orders barring oil companies from drilling new wells on federal lands and other areas of the country that the real president, Donald Trump, opened up for exploration during his tenure.
Even before his handlers were making policy, Biden campaigned on waging war on the fossil fuel industry, bending to the 'green energy' lunatics who are working to wreck our economy because they hate America as founded.
Now, Biden's handlers have instructed him to go after the big oil companies themselves, issuing them threats of 'presidential actions' if they refused to ramp up production amid the sky-high fuel prices the regime's policies caused in the first place.
Only, the companies have no excess capacity to 'ramp up': They are operating nearly at full capacity right now and besides, even if they had spare capacity, the labor market that Trump built is so tight there aren't any extra oilfield and oil refinery workers to be found.
“At a time of war – historically high refinery profit margins being passed directly onto American families are not acceptable,” the figurehead president said in a letter to oil companies including Exxon Mobil and Chevron this week.
?[C]ompanies must take immediate actions to increase the supply of gasoline, diesel, and other refined product,” the letter added.
Refiners can’t just ramp up output, with utilization rates already above 90%. Additionally, some refiners are now being reconfigured to make alternate products like biofuel.
Refining capacity has dropped since the pandemic took hold, which is a factor in the rapid advance of fuel prices. Demand has returned as economies restart and people travel once again, but supply remains tight.
Nevertheless, Biden threatened that his administration is prepared to use “all reasonable and appropriate Federal Government tools and emergency authorities to increase refinery capacity and output in the near term.”
He cited a “global challenge and global concern,” with around 3 million barrels per day of global capacity offline since the start of the pandemic -- not nearly enough to do much about current prices anyway.
His letter pointed to the “unprecedented disconnect between the price of oil and the price of gas.”
“Since the beginning of the year, refiners’ margins for refining gasoline and diesel have tripled, and are currently at their highest levels ever recorded,” he said.
This is because oil is a traded commodity, and when traders see a policy environment that is hostile to the industry, they know that refiners and oil companies are not going to invest in new facilities, new rigs, or new drilling, meaning over time, the supply of oil will drop even as demand continues to be high -- leading to perpetually high gas prices.
High gas and diesel prices are being felt by average Americans in a big way. Fuel prices, along with food costs and inflation, generally, have become the biggest issues heading into the 2o22 midterms, which Democrats won't mind losing because 'their guy' remains at the helm of policy in the White House.
Biden's ongoing war on big oil is going to continue to keep prices high -- unless Republicans can manage a congressional supermajority they can use to override Biden's vetoes until the next presidential election. See EnergySupply.news for more coverage of the domestic and international energy supply.
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