The price of oil was so low in 2020 that oil companies shut down drilling and laid off workers. After enough people got vaccinated and were able to go out again, demand went up faster than the oil companies could cover.
This has nothing to do with Biden or “climate change policy” and everything with global supply and demand. Bit I don’t expect Loony Lisa to understand any of that.
Guess you posters heard what idiot Biden said about why the economy is down. He said people aren’t buy things in brick and mortar stores but are buying online instead. Money is money, Sleep Joe, no matter where they spend it.
Citing high gas prices, Biden asks FTC to redouble probe of possible ‘illegal conduct’
U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday said there was mounting evidence of anti-consumer behavior by oil and gas companies that is keeping fuel prices elevated, asking the Federal Trade Commission to dig deeper into possible “illegal conduct” in the market.
Gas prices have continued to rise at the pump even though the price of unfinished gasoline has dropped over the last month, Biden said, noting that the two largest U.S. oil and gas companies were on track to nearly double their net income compared to 2019.
“I do not accept hard-working Americans paying more for gas because of anti-competitive or otherwise potentially illegal conduct,” the president said in the letter to Khan.
I could waste my time explaining why presidents have no control over an international commodity like gasoline, but the people who believe this nonsense are impervious to actual facts and reality.
Twenty five years ago Al Gore predicted NYC would be under water in ten years. The ocean level hasn`t change in all of that time. Climate change? Global warming? There are no facts. There only opinions. The amount of water on planet earth is finite. It never goes up or down.
Last February the Saudis announced they were raising oil prices to make up for the 40% loss in profit from COVID-19 in 2020. Others followed suit. That started the worldwide inflation we have now.
Likewise, regulatory burdens imposed on banks that effectively result in denying capital to some in the industry is stifling oil and gas production, Heywood Cooper, principal at Houston-based Argos Minerals, told Just The News. “The administration is committed to denying the energy industry access to capital, going down the same road as the Carter administration in the 1970s, which carried over into the ’80s,” he said.The policy changes come as European and Asian demand for oil is limiting available U.S. domestic supply, causing gas prices — and other costs in turn — to rise. This past week, the U.S. benchmark for crude oil, the West Texas Index (WTI), surpassed $81 a barrel, and the international benchmark, Brent Crude topped $84 a barrel. The price of crude oil accounts for roughly 67% of the per-gallon gas price, the U.S. Energy Information Administration explains, excluding state and federal taxes.As the WTI and Brent indexes increase, gas prices go up; as they fall, so do gas prices.At this time last year, oil was roughly $45 a barrel, having increased from minus $35 a barrel in March — the lowest ever in WTI history. Instead of supporting U.S. domestic production to recover losses from the bloodbath of 2020, the Biden administration called on OPEC+ to increase crude supply — making the U.S. even more dependent on foreign oil.
Americans using natural gas to heat their homes could spend an average of $746 this winter, which is a 30% increase from last winter. Homes heated by propane can expect a 54% increase, 43% for oil, and 6% for electric, according to the Energy Information Administration report, CNN noted.
Biden shut down construction on the Keystone XL pipeline when he took office, which would have transported oil from Canada to the U.S. The administration has also halted some new drilling sites, for which the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority has filed a lawsuit against, The Epoch Times reported.
Granholm explained that Biden is “focused on both the immediate term and the long term — let us get off of the volatility associated with fossil fuels and associated with others who don’t have our country’s interests at heart, and invest in moving to clean energy where we will not have this problem,” she said, before promoting Biden’s infrastructure and spending bills as prioritizing these issues.? Why not be energy independent? move to clean energy where we will not have this problem? Oh like Solydra?
Here are eight facts about the Barack Obama Solyndra scandal:
1. In 2009, the California-based green energy solar panel manufacturer Solyndra received a $535 million loan. The stimulus-funded loan, which was originally applied for in 2006 under the Bush Administration, was guaranteed by the Department of Energy.
2. While visiting Solyndra in May of 2010, President Barack Obama claimed Solyndra was “leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.”
3. In August of 2011, The Washington Post reported that Solyndra shut down, “leaving 1,100 people out of work and taxpayers obligated for $535 million in federal loans.” According to Solyndra Chief Executive Brian Harrison, “Regulatory and policy uncertainties made it impossible to raise capital to quickly rescue the operation.”
4. The Solyndra controversy was elevated to a scandal when it was revealed that Office of Management and Budget officials felt pressured to approve the loan, despite an awareness of Solyndra’s financial instability. ABC News reported, “The deal later came under scrutiny from independent government watch dogs and members of Congress, which said the administration had bypassed key taxpayer protections in a rush to approve the funds — claims the administration has denied.”
5. Reporter Chris Good from The Atlantic wrote, “If White House officials handled taxpayer dollars irresponsibly for the sake of promoting Obama’s signature piece of legislation at the time, it would constitute a potential ethical lapse that resonates with criticisms against the stimulus and ballooning deficits.”
6. Questions about potential political motivations behind the special treatment of the Solyndra loan further fueled the green energy scandal. The Week reported, “The family foundation of billionaire George Kaiser, an Obama fundraiser, is one of Solyndra’s big investors. The GOP says that Team Obama interfered to speed up the loan approval, cutting short due diligence so that Vice President Joe Biden could announce the loan at the Sept. 4, 2009, groundbreaking of a new Solyndra factory being financed by that government cash.”
7. Newly appointed White House Ebola response coordinator Ron Klain was previously Joe Biden’s chief of staff. According to The Washington Post, Klain “dismissed auditor’s concerns about Solyndra’s solvency, reasoning that all innovative companies come with risk.”
8. Thomas Pyle of U.S. News wrote an article on the issuance of new loan guarantees to additional green companies despite the Solyndra scandal. “Now here we are, $535 billion in wasted taxpayer dollars later, and it seems that the administration is intent on going full speed ahead. In fact, the president recently said in an interview that the Solyndra deal was ‘a good bet.’ Talk about a disconnect.”
He used many examples to show how inflation is skyrocketing, including rising food costs and the soaring cost of cars and homes. Carlson said that Biden’s insane government spending is making the Federal Reserve’s policies hurt Americans even moreso, but the elites don’t seem to care very much…
Carlson emphasized that there are people who are directly responsible for these policies, and they should be held accountable for their deliberate destruction of the U.S. economy.
“What he didn’t say was that this is not an act of God. This isn’t a hurricane. It’s not an earthquake. It’s not something we can’t control. This is the result of decades of policy that have enriched a few and impoverished the many. When will the reckoning be for that? And what are the effects for you going forward?” he said to conclude his segment.”
Granholm is laughing in the faces of the American public and insulting their intelligence as they are destroyed by the regime’s policies. This is part and parcel of an illegitimate Biden White House that is at war with the people.
He (James Williams) thinks the solution to lower prices is to encourage more domestic production.
That could happen “both through leasing more Federal land onshore and offshore and not increasing regulation on the industry, as wells as encouraging, rather than discouraging, lending institutions to support the oil and gas industry,” he said.
“It seems that the policies so far are inconsistent. The actions are that the administration wants more OPEC and even possibly Iranian oil, while at the same time trying to reduce U.S. exploration and production because it causes global warming.”
James Williams, energy economist at WTRG Economics.
So relying on other countries doesn’t cause global warming???
Some companies also invest in alternative energy sources like wind power. The windmills were already installed before Biden was President.
Odd how conservatives wanted Biden to step in and interfere with business practices (curb inflation and force distribution) despite usually wanting the government to keep out of business practices… not so odd that, now that Biden is starting to do as they demanded, that they are up in arms about that..
The situation he created has led Biden into embarrassing situations where he has been forced to plead for rescue.Over the summer, his administration begged OPEC to increase oil production to combat rising gasoline prices. It refused.This month, Reuters reported that the Biden White House has approached domestic oil and gas producers, asking for help. These are the very companies that Biden has been demonizing and now he wants them to save him from himself.Anne Bradbury, the chief executive officer of the American Exploration and Production Council, explained who the culprit is.“By pursuing policies that restrict supply and make it harder to produce oil and natural gas here in America, Americans will have to pay more for their energy,” she said.
But never fear, White House press secretary Jen Psaki indicated that the higher prices just mean that Biden’s policies are going according to plan.
“Certainly, we all want to keep gasoline prices low, but the threat of the crisis—the climate crisis—certainly can’t wait any longer,” she said on Oct. 6.
One week later, Psaki appeared to soften the message somewhat, in recognition of how higher energy bills affect people, but attempted to mislead about the scope of the problem.
“[T]he American people are, of course, impacted by rising prices of gas in some parts of the country—not all,” she said.
This, of course, is not true. Gas prices are higher in all 50 states.
White House chief of staff Ron Klain then underscored the indifference of the Biden administration to the concerns of regular Americans by approving of a tweet from Harvard economist Jason Furman, who labeled “economic problems we’re facing,” such as “inflation, supply chains, etc.,” as merely “high-class problems.”
Klain quote-tweeted Furman and enthusiastically agreed, posting “This,” with two hand emojis pointing to Furman’s original post.
For Americans still struggling, it must be jarring that the White House chief of staff thinks rising grocery bills—driven by fuel prices and inflation—are “high-class problems.”
Such a callous dismissal of real-world issues, the endorsement of an Ivy League elitist view that working people are just imagining things, simply feeds the prevailing belief that Biden simply is bad at his job.
In the 1970s, Americans were told we were in a global cooling crisis and if something weren’t done, we’d enter a new ice age.
When that didn’t happen, a few decades later we were told that entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend was not reversed by the year 2000.
Despite the consistent failure of these apocalyptic warnings, that hasn’t stopped climate change alarmism. We’re now being told we only have 12 years to combat climate change and the solution is to fundamentally dismantle the system of free enterprise. That means Washington controls things like how we produce our energy, what food we eat and what type of cars we drive.
The question is, even if we believed their alarmist, catastrophic predictions, would their proposals work?
Not according to the climate scientists’ own models. Based on those models, even if the United States cut its carbon dioxide emissions to zero, it would only avert global warming by a few tenths of a degree Celsius — in 80 years!
We would see no noticeable difference in the climate, yet it would come at an enormous cost to the American people. Climate change is happening and human activity undoubtedly plays a role, but big-government climate policies are all economic pain, no environmental gain.
After all, the purpose of climate change regulations is to drive energy prices higher so families and businesses use less energy. Abundant energy sources such as coal, oil and natural gas have allowed Americans to affordably drive to their jobs, light and heat their homes, and power their refrigerators, computers, and iPhones.
On the other hand, more heavy-handed climate regulations would drive up electricity bills and prices at the pump. Families would be hurt multiple times over, paying not just more for energy but also more for food, clothing, and healthcare, as energy is critical for every stage of planting, harvesting, manufacturing, and transporting goods to consumers.
President Biden is not the cause of high fuel prices. People that believe this crap are gullible, short sighted idiots.
He does have ways to mitigate them, but I’m thinking Trump drained the nations oil reserves. I don’t know this, as it has not been talked about, but wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he did.
Over the next 16 years, the regulations would eliminate, on average, nearly 400,000 jobs annually. The typical family of would experience income losses totaling more than $20,000. The economy as a whole would suffer lost gross domestic product (GDP) totaling more than $2.5 trillion.Why such dramatic effects? Because most of the economy runs on fossil fuels. In 2017, they generated nearly two-thirds (63.5 percent) of our electricity. That same year, petroleum accounted for 92 percent of our transportation fuel.The Obama regulations were designed to drive energy prices higher so that families and businesses would use less energy, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions. While Americans would feel the pain directly through higher electric bills and higher prices at the pump, they would be hurt even more by rising prices for food, housing, clothing, health care — virtually everything that requires energy to make, transport and operate.All of these sacrifices would be made to honor the Paris climate accord — and that accord is a total sham. It has no enforcement mechanism and no penalties for failing to meet emissions targets.Moreover, it leaves developing countries essentially free to increase their emissions as much as they want. For instance, it lets China (the world’s largest emitter) and India (the 3rd largest) continue along their current, rising emissions trajectory, but to label their inaction as “progress.” The developing-nations loophole is immense, making the pacts global reduction targets — both near-term and long-term — virtually unattainable.
This is not to say that developing countries should be required to cut their emissions. Economic progress in these nations — the alleviation of what is often grinding poverty — depends on access to affordable, reliable power. Although carbon dioxide-free energy will likely play a larger role in meeting the world’s energy needs, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of energy will come from conventional energy sources.Even developed countries are demonstrating that the climate accord is a sham. A June 2018 report from Climate Action Network Europe found that “all EU countries are off target: they are failing to increase their climate action in line with the Paris Agreement goal. No single EU country is performing sufficiently in both ambition and progress in reducing carbon emissions.”When Trump first announced his intent to withdraw from Paris, critics suggested that he was making the U.S. a pariah among the international community. The only other countries not participating in the Paris Protocol, they noted, were Syria and Nicaragua.Well, now that Syria and Nicaragua have signed on, does that somehow make Paris a good agreement? Does the fact that North Korea, Venezuela and Zimbabwe are all signatories somehow make it compelling to join?By walking away from a fraud of a climate deal, the U.S. is not ceding leadership but demonstrating it.The Paris Agreement committed the U.S. to drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It would have hurt every sector of American business and every single American who depends on affordable, reliable energy.It was a terrible deal across the board, and it likely will hurt those countries that remain in the agreement.Unless members of Congress are intent on fleecing American families and businesses, there is no compelling reason to re-engage with Paris. The Climate Action Now Act would be a raw deal for energy consumers and taxpayers.
President Joe Biden said in his remarks at COP26, “Climate change is already ravaging the world. … It’s destroying people’s lives and livelihoods and doing it every single day. … It’s costing our nations trillions of dollars.” Is that accurate?Katie Tubb: Context is helpful. Since 1980, property damage from weather disasters has increased in the U.S., but this hides that there are more people, who are building more valuable real estate, and filling it with more valuable stuff. It also doesn’t answer whether things are getting worse.The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest assessment of climate science reports no discernible global trends for hurricanes, winter storms, floods, tornadoes, or thunderstorms, while it did report trends in heat waves, heavy precipitation, and some kinds of drought. And as a percent of global gross domestic product, damages from natural disasters have actually declined since 1990.Cost isn’t inconsequential, but at the end of the day, what matters in a disaster is peoples’ lives. Deaths from climate-related disasters have decreased 96% over the last century, which I think has everything to do with widespread economic freedom, growth, and access to energy to help us be more resilient in the age-old battle against natural disaster. In other words, poverty makes us more vulnerable to the whims of climate.Certainly our perception of natural disasters around the world and the human suffering they inflict has increased with a 24/7 news cycle. Often the goal of statements like the president’s is to alarm people and create urgency for action, as if the time where thinking and debate was over—to use an oversimplified discussion of science as a bludgeon to demand political conformity and a shield for avoiding accountability for the costs of policy choices. There ought to be robust debate over climate policies. That’s exactly what the left wants shut down by leveraging urgency.
Biden said that the high energy prices we are seeing is a reason to recommit to “clean energy goals,” so we aren’t “overly reliant on one source of power to power our economies and our communities.” Are we seeing high energy prices because we haven’t committed to clean energy?Tubb: California is an instructive example—no one would accuse California of being lukewarm on aggressive climate policy. The state is banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars and even lawn equipment.I don’t think it’s played out well for them. They have some of the highest gasoline prices in the country. They are the largest importer of electricity in the U.S. and their grid reliability monitor has been firing warning shots for several years now that reliability is strained. According to the Energy Information Administration, between 2018 and 2019, average energy costs fell 5% and Americans’ per capita energy costs decreased—in every state except California.It’s also amazing to me how those arguments are recycled over the years to justify central planning.
In the 1970s, the oil crisis was used to justify disastrous government price controls. In the mid-2000s, a projected looming energy supply crisis was used to justify cronyist energy subsidies and central planning policies like the Renewable Fuel Standard—both of which have failed. President Barack Obama told Americans we couldn’t drill our way to lower gasoline prices, and now Biden is telling Americans they shall not—all to justify command and control energy policy.
The Biden administration’s climate policy seeks to completely and rapidly transform the energy sector (and with it the American economy) into its own image, and in ways that have huge negative implications for both the size and scope of the federal government in Americans’ lives. I think we’re seeing some of the reverberations now.
Tubb: Perhaps more important is to ask what these cuts accomplish, getting to your question of is this a “laudable” goal. It sounds like it’s accomplishing a lot—a gigaton by 2030—but what Biden and his administration are not telling Americans is what kind of environmental impact they can expect to see.Biden’s goal will moderate global temperatures by 0.04 Celsius by the end of the century, according to The Heritage Foundation’s modeling, using the assumptions the Environmental Protection Agency and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change make about future warming. Special Climate Envoy John Kerry even acknowledges eliminating all U.S. greenhouse emissions will have no meaningful impact on global temperatures.And back in the Obama administration, then-EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy (who is now the White House national climate adviser orchestrating the administration’s climate policies) could not tell Congress how the Clean Power Plan would impact global temperatures—only that it was “an investment opportunity.”As I see it, it’s not reasonable or laudable to push policies that have real costs to American families and businesses and further erode the American system of limited, representative government for no environmental benefit.
Tubb: These aren’t climate policies—this is old-fashioned cronyism through the tax code. Right now, the Biden administration’s allies in Congress are trying to push hundreds of billions in tax subsidies for green energy. To be clear—the problem isn’t green energy technologies, which should be allowed to compete as some of the many options Americans have for energy. The problem is cronyist policies that are patently unfair and burden the taxpayer.But another concern is the perhaps less obvious legislation by way of regulation being done across the Biden administration in the name of climate policy. It’s not an overstatement to say that regulatory actions under the Biden administration are seeking to reengineer the American economic system away from free enterprise (queue the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Labor) and to crush federalism by exporting California’s climate policy experiment through federal regulatory standards (queue the EPA, Department of Energy, Department of Interior).For example, did you know that the Department of Energy is currently updating regulatory standards on the energy efficiency of refrigerators to reduce a modicum of greenhouse gases? And not just that, but also trailer homes, kitchen cooking ranges and ovens, washing machines and dryers, water heaters, lightbulbs, ceiling fans, dehumidifiers, dishwashers, microwaves, and furnaces. These policies directly impact the lives of Americans.
The Daily Signal: How can the U.S. better pursue a cleaner, healthier environment?Tubb: While I have little trust in the federal government to manage a grand “energy transition,” I have a lot of hope in the diverse abilities of people to creatively solve problems, innovate, adapt, and improve the world around them.>>> Biden’s Climate Policy Is a Titanic Disaster in WaitingHistory bears this out. One of The Heritage Foundation’s seminal products is the Index of Economic Freedom, and data from the index over decades clearly show that economic freedom goes hand-in-hand with economic growth, which is essential to environmental stewardship.One manifestation of that is what I mentioned earlier about climate-related deaths plummeting over the last century. Another is innovation in hydraulic fracking that created an energy boom almost no one saw coming and was in no one’s projections about the future energy prices and supply. Yet it’s mostly due to hydraulic fracking making natural gas abundant and affordable that carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector have fallen 33% since 2005.So the question that local, state, and federal policymakers should be asking is, how do we improve economic freedom in the U.S. and around the world? At the top of the list should be eliminating supposed climate policies that make people poorer and have no environmental impact.
The Daily Signal: How can the U.S. better pursue a cleaner, healthier environment?
Tubb: While I have little trust in the federal government to manage a grand “energy transition,” I have a lot of hope in the diverse abilities of people to creatively solve problems, innovate, adapt, and improve the world around them.
History bears this out. One of The Heritage Foundation’s seminal products is the Index of Economic Freedom, and data from the index over decades clearly show that economic freedom goes hand-in-hand with economic growth, which is essential to environmental stewardship.
One manifestation of that is what I mentioned earlier about climate-related deaths plummeting over the last century. Another is innovation in hydraulic fracking that created an energy boom almost no one saw coming and was in no one’s projections about the future energy prices and supply. Yet it’s mostly due to hydraulic fracking making natural gas abundant and affordable that carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector have fallen 33% since 2005.
So the question that local, state, and federal policymakers should be asking is, how do we improve economic freedom in the U.S. and around the world? At the top of the list should be eliminating supposed climate policies that make people poorer and have no environmental impact.
The oil companies with the biggest influence on the price are not affected much by Biden’s policies. They’re OPEC, and they’re keeping production down because it makes them more money that way. Good old capitalism.
RAGs over 2 years ago
Gee, Lisa, do you also work on the Texas power grid?
Daeder over 2 years ago
Alternative energy brings gas prices down! Try again, Lisa.
Concretionist over 2 years ago
Oh for pitysake.
suv2000 over 2 years ago
Lisa’s right again under Trump’s policy gas prices were dollar and a half a gallon
LookingGlass Premium Member over 2 years ago
LIEsa is another graduate in economics from Trump U!!
<:-|
Patjade over 2 years ago
Loony Lisa, The problem is global. Gas prices on post. Here? $3.49/gal. Gas prices on the local economy $5.95/gal.
Other Countries:
$USD
South Korea $5.95
Japan $5.53
Germany Frankfurt $5.57
France Paris $5.54
Portugal Lisbon $5.35
Hungary Budapest $4.94
I guess if you want to find cheaper gas, you can always go to one of these places:
Saudi Arabia Riyadh $0.91
Kuwait Kuwait City $0.78
Egypt Cairo $0.65
There is a reason for this. It’s called the pandemic.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/100615/will-oil-prices-go-2017.asp
The price of oil was so low in 2020 that oil companies shut down drilling and laid off workers. After enough people got vaccinated and were able to go out again, demand went up faster than the oil companies could cover.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2021/09/30/90-oil-by-years-end-post-covid-oil-supply-cant-keep-pace-with-post-covid-demand/
This has nothing to do with Biden or “climate change policy” and everything with global supply and demand. Bit I don’t expect Loony Lisa to understand any of that.
catmom1360 over 2 years ago
Guess you posters heard what idiot Biden said about why the economy is down. He said people aren’t buy things in brick and mortar stores but are buying online instead. Money is money, Sleep Joe, no matter where they spend it.
FrankErnesto over 2 years ago
Lisa can add two plus two and come up with five. A rare talent, but not useful.
DRkm Premium Member over 2 years ago
Oh, Lisa, climate change is going to be very costly…storm repairs, wild fires, water shortages are just the beginning.
Radish the wordsmith over 2 years ago
Citing high gas prices, Biden asks FTC to redouble probe of possible ‘illegal conduct’
U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday said there was mounting evidence of anti-consumer behavior by oil and gas companies that is keeping fuel prices elevated, asking the Federal Trade Commission to dig deeper into possible “illegal conduct” in the market.
Gas prices have continued to rise at the pump even though the price of unfinished gasoline has dropped over the last month, Biden said, noting that the two largest U.S. oil and gas companies were on track to nearly double their net income compared to 2019.
“I do not accept hard-working Americans paying more for gas because of anti-competitive or otherwise potentially illegal conduct,” the president said in the letter to Khan.
https://www.rawstory.com/citing-high-gas-prices-biden-asks-ftc-to-redouble-probe-of-possible-illegal-conduct/
Oil companies miss their republican tax breaks and slowed down production to raise prices.
Masterskrain Premium Member over 2 years ago
Well, Loony Lisa IS consistent… consistently WRONG, that is…
suzalee over 2 years ago
Oil companies lost a lot of money when things were shut down because of covid. Now they are getting it back.
Malroy O'Callahan over 2 years ago
Looks like you’re over the target, Ms. Benson.
1BlackLivesMatter Premium Member over 2 years ago
Great ’toon, as always, Lisa!
rmfrye Premium Member over 2 years ago
Do you EVER do any research?
donut reply over 2 years ago
Another right wing cartoon that makes me say, “Huh?!?!”
VegaAlopex over 2 years ago
Perhaps the anthracite industry should be tied there too?
ChristopherBurns over 2 years ago
I could waste my time explaining why presidents have no control over an international commodity like gasoline, but the people who believe this nonsense are impervious to actual facts and reality.
rickmac1937 Premium Member over 2 years ago
Because he’s an ahole
BB71 over 2 years ago
Twenty five years ago Al Gore predicted NYC would be under water in ten years. The ocean level hasn`t change in all of that time. Climate change? Global warming? There are no facts. There only opinions. The amount of water on planet earth is finite. It never goes up or down.
Valiant1943 Premium Member over 2 years ago
Why be a shill for Big Oil and spew their talking points
martens over 2 years ago
Y’know, there’s ignorance , and then there’s abysmal ignorance. Lisa has reached the level of abysmal ignorance.
ncorgbl over 2 years ago
Last February the Saudis announced they were raising oil prices to make up for the 40% loss in profit from COVID-19 in 2020. Others followed suit. That started the worldwide inflation we have now.
cdbro over 2 years ago
Likewise, regulatory burdens imposed on banks that effectively result in denying capital to some in the industry is stifling oil and gas production, Heywood Cooper, principal at Houston-based Argos Minerals, told Just The News. “The administration is committed to denying the energy industry access to capital, going down the same road as the Carter administration in the 1970s, which carried over into the ’80s,” he said.The policy changes come as European and Asian demand for oil is limiting available U.S. domestic supply, causing gas prices — and other costs in turn — to rise. This past week, the U.S. benchmark for crude oil, the West Texas Index (WTI), surpassed $81 a barrel, and the international benchmark, Brent Crude topped $84 a barrel. The price of crude oil accounts for roughly 67% of the per-gallon gas price, the U.S. Energy Information Administration explains, excluding state and federal taxes.As the WTI and Brent indexes increase, gas prices go up; as they fall, so do gas prices.At this time last year, oil was roughly $45 a barrel, having increased from minus $35 a barrel in March — the lowest ever in WTI history. Instead of supporting U.S. domestic production to recover losses from the bloodbath of 2020, the Biden administration called on OPEC+ to increase crude supply — making the U.S. even more dependent on foreign oil.
cdbro over 2 years ago
Americans using natural gas to heat their homes could spend an average of $746 this winter, which is a 30% increase from last winter. Homes heated by propane can expect a 54% increase, 43% for oil, and 6% for electric, according to the Energy Information Administration report, CNN noted.
Biden shut down construction on the Keystone XL pipeline when he took office, which would have transported oil from Canada to the U.S. The administration has also halted some new drilling sites, for which the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority has filed a lawsuit against, The Epoch Times reported.
cdbro over 2 years ago
Granholm explained that Biden is “focused on both the immediate term and the long term — let us get off of the volatility associated with fossil fuels and associated with others who don’t have our country’s interests at heart, and invest in moving to clean energy where we will not have this problem,” she said, before promoting Biden’s infrastructure and spending bills as prioritizing these issues.? Why not be energy independent? move to clean energy where we will not have this problem? Oh like Solydra?
cdbro over 2 years ago
Here are eight facts about the Barack Obama Solyndra scandal:
1. In 2009, the California-based green energy solar panel manufacturer Solyndra received a $535 million loan. The stimulus-funded loan, which was originally applied for in 2006 under the Bush Administration, was guaranteed by the Department of Energy.
2. While visiting Solyndra in May of 2010, President Barack Obama claimed Solyndra was “leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.”
3. In August of 2011, The Washington Post reported that Solyndra shut down, “leaving 1,100 people out of work and taxpayers obligated for $535 million in federal loans.” According to Solyndra Chief Executive Brian Harrison, “Regulatory and policy uncertainties made it impossible to raise capital to quickly rescue the operation.”
4. The Solyndra controversy was elevated to a scandal when it was revealed that Office of Management and Budget officials felt pressured to approve the loan, despite an awareness of Solyndra’s financial instability. ABC News reported, “The deal later came under scrutiny from independent government watch dogs and members of Congress, which said the administration had bypassed key taxpayer protections in a rush to approve the funds — claims the administration has denied.”
cdbro over 2 years ago
5. Reporter Chris Good from The Atlantic wrote, “If White House officials handled taxpayer dollars irresponsibly for the sake of promoting Obama’s signature piece of legislation at the time, it would constitute a potential ethical lapse that resonates with criticisms against the stimulus and ballooning deficits.”
6. Questions about potential political motivations behind the special treatment of the Solyndra loan further fueled the green energy scandal. The Week reported, “The family foundation of billionaire George Kaiser, an Obama fundraiser, is one of Solyndra’s big investors. The GOP says that Team Obama interfered to speed up the loan approval, cutting short due diligence so that Vice President Joe Biden could announce the loan at the Sept. 4, 2009, groundbreaking of a new Solyndra factory being financed by that government cash.”
7. Newly appointed White House Ebola response coordinator Ron Klain was previously Joe Biden’s chief of staff. According to The Washington Post, Klain “dismissed auditor’s concerns about Solyndra’s solvency, reasoning that all innovative companies come with risk.”
8. Thomas Pyle of U.S. News wrote an article on the issuance of new loan guarantees to additional green companies despite the Solyndra scandal. “Now here we are, $535 billion in wasted taxpayer dollars later, and it seems that the administration is intent on going full speed ahead. In fact, the president recently said in an interview that the Solyndra deal was ‘a good bet.’ Talk about a disconnect.”
cdbro over 2 years ago
He used many examples to show how inflation is skyrocketing, including rising food costs and the soaring cost of cars and homes. Carlson said that Biden’s insane government spending is making the Federal Reserve’s policies hurt Americans even moreso, but the elites don’t seem to care very much…
Carlson emphasized that there are people who are directly responsible for these policies, and they should be held accountable for their deliberate destruction of the U.S. economy.
“What he didn’t say was that this is not an act of God. This isn’t a hurricane. It’s not an earthquake. It’s not something we can’t control. This is the result of decades of policy that have enriched a few and impoverished the many. When will the reckoning be for that? And what are the effects for you going forward?” he said to conclude his segment.”
Granholm is laughing in the faces of the American public and insulting their intelligence as they are destroyed by the regime’s policies. This is part and parcel of an illegitimate Biden White House that is at war with the people.
cdbro over 2 years ago
He (James Williams) thinks the solution to lower prices is to encourage more domestic production.
That could happen “both through leasing more Federal land onshore and offshore and not increasing regulation on the industry, as wells as encouraging, rather than discouraging, lending institutions to support the oil and gas industry,” he said.
“It seems that the policies so far are inconsistent. The actions are that the administration wants more OPEC and even possibly Iranian oil, while at the same time trying to reduce U.S. exploration and production because it causes global warming.”
James Williams, energy economist at WTRG Economics.
So relying on other countries doesn’t cause global warming???
ferddo over 2 years ago
Some companies also invest in alternative energy sources like wind power. The windmills were already installed before Biden was President.
Odd how conservatives wanted Biden to step in and interfere with business practices (curb inflation and force distribution) despite usually wanting the government to keep out of business practices… not so odd that, now that Biden is starting to do as they demanded, that they are up in arms about that..
Pickled Pete over 2 years ago
Where is Ricky Quest?
DrDon1 over 2 years ago
^ Why encourage a’TROLL?’
lawguy05 over 2 years ago
By all means – let’s blame the oil companies who have had their throats slit by Biden to the point they can’t do anything. Liberalism is a disease.
DrDon1 over 2 years ago
^ So, the profits ( $$ ) reported by ExxonMobil and Chevron were “created” by their PR departments….
cdbro over 2 years ago
The situation he created has led Biden into embarrassing situations where he has been forced to plead for rescue.Over the summer, his administration begged OPEC to increase oil production to combat rising gasoline prices. It refused.This month, Reuters reported that the Biden White House has approached domestic oil and gas producers, asking for help. These are the very companies that Biden has been demonizing and now he wants them to save him from himself.Anne Bradbury, the chief executive officer of the American Exploration and Production Council, explained who the culprit is.“By pursuing policies that restrict supply and make it harder to produce oil and natural gas here in America, Americans will have to pay more for their energy,” she said.
cdbro over 2 years ago
But never fear, White House press secretary Jen Psaki indicated that the higher prices just mean that Biden’s policies are going according to plan.
“Certainly, we all want to keep gasoline prices low, but the threat of the crisis—the climate crisis—certainly can’t wait any longer,” she said on Oct. 6.
One week later, Psaki appeared to soften the message somewhat, in recognition of how higher energy bills affect people, but attempted to mislead about the scope of the problem.
“[T]he American people are, of course, impacted by rising prices of gas in some parts of the country—not all,” she said.
This, of course, is not true. Gas prices are higher in all 50 states.
White House chief of staff Ron Klain then underscored the indifference of the Biden administration to the concerns of regular Americans by approving of a tweet from Harvard economist Jason Furman, who labeled “economic problems we’re facing,” such as “inflation, supply chains, etc.,” as merely “high-class problems.”
Klain quote-tweeted Furman and enthusiastically agreed, posting “This,” with two hand emojis pointing to Furman’s original post.
For Americans still struggling, it must be jarring that the White House chief of staff thinks rising grocery bills—driven by fuel prices and inflation—are “high-class problems.”
Such a callous dismissal of real-world issues, the endorsement of an Ivy League elitist view that working people are just imagining things, simply feeds the prevailing belief that Biden simply is bad at his job.
cdbro over 2 years ago
In the 1970s, Americans were told we were in a global cooling crisis and if something weren’t done, we’d enter a new ice age.
When that didn’t happen, a few decades later we were told that entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend was not reversed by the year 2000.
Despite the consistent failure of these apocalyptic warnings, that hasn’t stopped climate change alarmism. We’re now being told we only have 12 years to combat climate change and the solution is to fundamentally dismantle the system of free enterprise. That means Washington controls things like how we produce our energy, what food we eat and what type of cars we drive.
The question is, even if we believed their alarmist, catastrophic predictions, would their proposals work?
cdbro over 2 years ago
Not according to the climate scientists’ own models. Based on those models, even if the United States cut its carbon dioxide emissions to zero, it would only avert global warming by a few tenths of a degree Celsius — in 80 years!
We would see no noticeable difference in the climate, yet it would come at an enormous cost to the American people. Climate change is happening and human activity undoubtedly plays a role, but big-government climate policies are all economic pain, no environmental gain.
After all, the purpose of climate change regulations is to drive energy prices higher so families and businesses use less energy. Abundant energy sources such as coal, oil and natural gas have allowed Americans to affordably drive to their jobs, light and heat their homes, and power their refrigerators, computers, and iPhones.
On the other hand, more heavy-handed climate regulations would drive up electricity bills and prices at the pump. Families would be hurt multiple times over, paying not just more for energy but also more for food, clothing, and healthcare, as energy is critical for every stage of planting, harvesting, manufacturing, and transporting goods to consumers.
GiantShetlandPony over 2 years ago
President Biden is not the cause of high fuel prices. People that believe this crap are gullible, short sighted idiots.
He does have ways to mitigate them, but I’m thinking Trump drained the nations oil reserves. I don’t know this, as it has not been talked about, but wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he did.
cdbro over 2 years ago
Over the next 16 years, the regulations would eliminate, on average, nearly 400,000 jobs annually. The typical family of would experience income losses totaling more than $20,000. The economy as a whole would suffer lost gross domestic product (GDP) totaling more than $2.5 trillion.Why such dramatic effects? Because most of the economy runs on fossil fuels. In 2017, they generated nearly two-thirds (63.5 percent) of our electricity. That same year, petroleum accounted for 92 percent of our transportation fuel.The Obama regulations were designed to drive energy prices higher so that families and businesses would use less energy, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions. While Americans would feel the pain directly through higher electric bills and higher prices at the pump, they would be hurt even more by rising prices for food, housing, clothing, health care — virtually everything that requires energy to make, transport and operate.All of these sacrifices would be made to honor the Paris climate accord — and that accord is a total sham. It has no enforcement mechanism and no penalties for failing to meet emissions targets.Moreover, it leaves developing countries essentially free to increase their emissions as much as they want. For instance, it lets China (the world’s largest emitter) and India (the 3rd largest) continue along their current, rising emissions trajectory, but to label their inaction as “progress.” The developing-nations loophole is immense, making the pacts global reduction targets — both near-term and long-term — virtually unattainable.
cdbro over 2 years ago
This is not to say that developing countries should be required to cut their emissions. Economic progress in these nations — the alleviation of what is often grinding poverty — depends on access to affordable, reliable power. Although carbon dioxide-free energy will likely play a larger role in meeting the world’s energy needs, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of energy will come from conventional energy sources.Even developed countries are demonstrating that the climate accord is a sham. A June 2018 report from Climate Action Network Europe found that “all EU countries are off target: they are failing to increase their climate action in line with the Paris Agreement goal. No single EU country is performing sufficiently in both ambition and progress in reducing carbon emissions.”When Trump first announced his intent to withdraw from Paris, critics suggested that he was making the U.S. a pariah among the international community. The only other countries not participating in the Paris Protocol, they noted, were Syria and Nicaragua.Well, now that Syria and Nicaragua have signed on, does that somehow make Paris a good agreement? Does the fact that North Korea, Venezuela and Zimbabwe are all signatories somehow make it compelling to join?By walking away from a fraud of a climate deal, the U.S. is not ceding leadership but demonstrating it.The Paris Agreement committed the U.S. to drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It would have hurt every sector of American business and every single American who depends on affordable, reliable energy.It was a terrible deal across the board, and it likely will hurt those countries that remain in the agreement.Unless members of Congress are intent on fleecing American families and businesses, there is no compelling reason to re-engage with Paris. The Climate Action Now Act would be a raw deal for energy consumers and taxpayers.
cdbro over 2 years ago
President Joe Biden said in his remarks at COP26, “Climate change is already ravaging the world. … It’s destroying people’s lives and livelihoods and doing it every single day. … It’s costing our nations trillions of dollars.” Is that accurate?Katie Tubb: Context is helpful. Since 1980, property damage from weather disasters has increased in the U.S., but this hides that there are more people, who are building more valuable real estate, and filling it with more valuable stuff. It also doesn’t answer whether things are getting worse.The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest assessment of climate science reports no discernible global trends for hurricanes, winter storms, floods, tornadoes, or thunderstorms, while it did report trends in heat waves, heavy precipitation, and some kinds of drought. And as a percent of global gross domestic product, damages from natural disasters have actually declined since 1990.Cost isn’t inconsequential, but at the end of the day, what matters in a disaster is peoples’ lives. Deaths from climate-related disasters have decreased 96% over the last century, which I think has everything to do with widespread economic freedom, growth, and access to energy to help us be more resilient in the age-old battle against natural disaster. In other words, poverty makes us more vulnerable to the whims of climate.Certainly our perception of natural disasters around the world and the human suffering they inflict has increased with a 24/7 news cycle. Often the goal of statements like the president’s is to alarm people and create urgency for action, as if the time where thinking and debate was over—to use an oversimplified discussion of science as a bludgeon to demand political conformity and a shield for avoiding accountability for the costs of policy choices. There ought to be robust debate over climate policies. That’s exactly what the left wants shut down by leveraging urgency.
cdbro over 2 years ago
Biden said that the high energy prices we are seeing is a reason to recommit to “clean energy goals,” so we aren’t “overly reliant on one source of power to power our economies and our communities.” Are we seeing high energy prices because we haven’t committed to clean energy?Tubb: California is an instructive example—no one would accuse California of being lukewarm on aggressive climate policy. The state is banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars and even lawn equipment.I don’t think it’s played out well for them. They have some of the highest gasoline prices in the country. They are the largest importer of electricity in the U.S. and their grid reliability monitor has been firing warning shots for several years now that reliability is strained. According to the Energy Information Administration, between 2018 and 2019, average energy costs fell 5% and Americans’ per capita energy costs decreased—in every state except California.It’s also amazing to me how those arguments are recycled over the years to justify central planning.
cdbro over 2 years ago
In the 1970s, the oil crisis was used to justify disastrous government price controls. In the mid-2000s, a projected looming energy supply crisis was used to justify cronyist energy subsidies and central planning policies like the Renewable Fuel Standard—both of which have failed. President Barack Obama told Americans we couldn’t drill our way to lower gasoline prices, and now Biden is telling Americans they shall not—all to justify command and control energy policy.
The Biden administration’s climate policy seeks to completely and rapidly transform the energy sector (and with it the American economy) into its own image, and in ways that have huge negative implications for both the size and scope of the federal government in Americans’ lives. I think we’re seeing some of the reverberations now.
cdbro over 2 years ago
Tubb: Perhaps more important is to ask what these cuts accomplish, getting to your question of is this a “laudable” goal. It sounds like it’s accomplishing a lot—a gigaton by 2030—but what Biden and his administration are not telling Americans is what kind of environmental impact they can expect to see.Biden’s goal will moderate global temperatures by 0.04 Celsius by the end of the century, according to The Heritage Foundation’s modeling, using the assumptions the Environmental Protection Agency and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change make about future warming. Special Climate Envoy John Kerry even acknowledges eliminating all U.S. greenhouse emissions will have no meaningful impact on global temperatures.And back in the Obama administration, then-EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy (who is now the White House national climate adviser orchestrating the administration’s climate policies) could not tell Congress how the Clean Power Plan would impact global temperatures—only that it was “an investment opportunity.”As I see it, it’s not reasonable or laudable to push policies that have real costs to American families and businesses and further erode the American system of limited, representative government for no environmental benefit.
cdbro over 2 years ago
Tubb: These aren’t climate policies—this is old-fashioned cronyism through the tax code. Right now, the Biden administration’s allies in Congress are trying to push hundreds of billions in tax subsidies for green energy. To be clear—the problem isn’t green energy technologies, which should be allowed to compete as some of the many options Americans have for energy. The problem is cronyist policies that are patently unfair and burden the taxpayer.But another concern is the perhaps less obvious legislation by way of regulation being done across the Biden administration in the name of climate policy. It’s not an overstatement to say that regulatory actions under the Biden administration are seeking to reengineer the American economic system away from free enterprise (queue the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Labor) and to crush federalism by exporting California’s climate policy experiment through federal regulatory standards (queue the EPA, Department of Energy, Department of Interior).For example, did you know that the Department of Energy is currently updating regulatory standards on the energy efficiency of refrigerators to reduce a modicum of greenhouse gases? And not just that, but also trailer homes, kitchen cooking ranges and ovens, washing machines and dryers, water heaters, lightbulbs, ceiling fans, dehumidifiers, dishwashers, microwaves, and furnaces. These policies directly impact the lives of Americans.
cdbro over 2 years ago
The Daily Signal: How can the U.S. better pursue a cleaner, healthier environment?Tubb: While I have little trust in the federal government to manage a grand “energy transition,” I have a lot of hope in the diverse abilities of people to creatively solve problems, innovate, adapt, and improve the world around them.>>> Biden’s Climate Policy Is a Titanic Disaster in WaitingHistory bears this out. One of The Heritage Foundation’s seminal products is the Index of Economic Freedom, and data from the index over decades clearly show that economic freedom goes hand-in-hand with economic growth, which is essential to environmental stewardship.One manifestation of that is what I mentioned earlier about climate-related deaths plummeting over the last century. Another is innovation in hydraulic fracking that created an energy boom almost no one saw coming and was in no one’s projections about the future energy prices and supply. Yet it’s mostly due to hydraulic fracking making natural gas abundant and affordable that carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector have fallen 33% since 2005.So the question that local, state, and federal policymakers should be asking is, how do we improve economic freedom in the U.S. and around the world? At the top of the list should be eliminating supposed climate policies that make people poorer and have no environmental impact.
cdbro over 2 years ago
The Daily Signal: How can the U.S. better pursue a cleaner, healthier environment?
Tubb: While I have little trust in the federal government to manage a grand “energy transition,” I have a lot of hope in the diverse abilities of people to creatively solve problems, innovate, adapt, and improve the world around them.
History bears this out. One of The Heritage Foundation’s seminal products is the Index of Economic Freedom, and data from the index over decades clearly show that economic freedom goes hand-in-hand with economic growth, which is essential to environmental stewardship.
One manifestation of that is what I mentioned earlier about climate-related deaths plummeting over the last century. Another is innovation in hydraulic fracking that created an energy boom almost no one saw coming and was in no one’s projections about the future energy prices and supply. Yet it’s mostly due to hydraulic fracking making natural gas abundant and affordable that carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector have fallen 33% since 2005.
So the question that local, state, and federal policymakers should be asking is, how do we improve economic freedom in the U.S. and around the world? At the top of the list should be eliminating supposed climate policies that make people poorer and have no environmental impact.
Sun over 2 years ago
Puppet Biden is incompetent.
calliarcale over 2 years ago
The oil companies with the biggest influence on the price are not affected much by Biden’s policies. They’re OPEC, and they’re keeping production down because it makes them more money that way. Good old capitalism.
Rich Douglas over 2 years ago
Ummmm…. because demand is high and oil producers are a cartel?
dandye over 2 years ago
Progressives need to ADMIT that one of their goals is to make all fossil fuels so expensive that everyone HAS to convert. JUST ADMIT IT AND MOVE ON!
BB71 over 2 years ago
Climate change: Spring, summer, fall, winter.