With the price of gasoline going up 30 to 40 cents over the past couple of months, it would be easy to grumble, “Thanks, Bidenomics.”
After all, President Joe Biden said during the 2020 campaign that he was going to be a green energy president who would cut back on America’s production of fossil fuels so that the country could lead the world in attacking climate change.
Biden still talks that way. But surprisingly, the oil production statistics do not bear him out.
Republican presidential candidates are blaming the summer increase in gas prices on Biden’s green energy tendencies. But to do that, they are either overlooking or ignoring the fact that America is producing more oil than ever before.
“U.S. oil production — already the highest in the world — is on track to set a new record this year, and will probably rise even more in 2024,” the Politico website reported. “But the ever-increasing flow of U.S. crude has failed to keep a lid on gasoline prices, showing once again that a global market drives the fuel prices that shape presidents’ political futures.”
The White House doesn’t talk about this. As Politico noted, increasing oil production is the opposite of what Biden promised in 2020, when he said he would halt new drilling on federal lands — something else that has not happened.
Energy Information Administration statistics make the storm surge of oil evident. During the first three years of Donald Trump’s administration, U.S. daily oil production went from 9.6 million barrels in 2017 to 12.3 million in 2019. It took the economic hammer swung by the coronavirus to reduce that — down to 11.3 million barrels per day in 2020.
In 2021, Biden’s first year in office, daily production dipped slightly. But since then, it’s been increasing. It is almost certain to top 2019’s production this year, and then is expected to set another record in 2024.
Which leads to this question: If the U.S. is the world’s biggest oil producer, and it’s bringing a record amount of crude oil out of the ground, why have gasoline prices risen lately?
As the Politico story noted, America may be the top dog of oil, but it’s not the only dog. Other countries are working to keep oil prices up, and lately they have been succeeding.
Most Russian oil, for example, has been withdrawn from world markets due to economic sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine. The Russians now tend to sell only to their political allies.
And Saudi Arabia, another large oil nation, has been aggressive in reducing its production — by most reports up to 1 million barrels per day — in an effort to keep prices elevated.
In the end, the oil market is just behaving like it always has. As Politico put it, “Gasoline prices rise when the world’s major economies run hot, and fall when they’re not.”
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
