The Unnecessary Oil Panic
Democrats have seized on higher oil and gas prices to blame President Trump for a big blunder in attacking Iran.
Remember that time when Joe Biden raided the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to save his sinking poll numbers from rising gas prices? Or when gas prices hit a national average of $5.02 per gallon in June 2022? Or when Biden soon went hat-in-hand to the Saudis to beg them to drill for more oil?
Why do I bring all that up? Oh, no particular reason.
It’s just that oil prices jumped this week after President Donald Trump launched Operation Epic Fury, and that means higher prices at the gas pump. The national average price today is $3.54 — 42 cents higher than a week ago. And Democrats are big mad about it.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer must not recall Biden’s burglary of the SPR, which left it at a 40-year low. “The instability created by Trump in this war is already hitting families in their wallets,” Schumer complained on Sunday. “The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is for moments just like this.” Too bad Biden depleted it.
Schumer also seems to have conveniently forgotten that he blocked Trump’s attempts to fully stock the SPR during his first term.
Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom’s press office posted an AI image of Trump adjusting gas prices at a Chevron to $8.21 per gallon. Maybe Newsom didn’t remember that the only state where gas ever hit $8 a gallon was … California. Or maybe he just can’t read.
The reason California’s gas is and remains so expensive is Democrat policies, not a temporary foreign conflict. Unlike Biden and the Leftmedia blaming Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the 2022 gas-price spike, the situation in Iran actually does have an outsized impact. The Washington Post reports, “The Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for one-fifth of the world’s oil supply, has been effectively closed for a week with vessels carrying oil, natural gas and other cargo backing up because of the threat of Iranian attacks on tankers and other ships.”
Yeah, that would cause prices to go up. Indeed, a barrel of Brent crude jumped to $120 per barrel on Monday before settling back down to $90 this morning. Obviously, gas pains are going to be a real thing again, and it’s hard to say how long that will last. Trump called it a “small price to pay” for a necessary mission. I suppose that depends on the results.
Prices dropped after he promised to hit Iran “TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far” if it continues blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Pounding Iran into total submission is definitely the way to win.
As for American oil, Trump rightly pointed to our ability to solve our own problem. “We’ve got a lot of oil,” he said. “Our country has a tremendous amount. There’s a lot of oil out there. That’ll get healed very quickly.”
Yes and no. A lot of American oil is drawn from shale and is lighter and “sweeter” than the heavy crude we import. We import that heavy crude, though, because our refineries can’t process the oil we’re drilling ourselves. That seems … less than ideal.
“In April 2020,” notes National Review’s Jim Geraghty, “we produced almost 19 million barrels per day. As of last December, we’re at 18 million. The most recent major oil refinery built in the U.S. was constructed in 1976.”
That should change regardless of the situation in the Middle East.
