slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Are gas prices going up? And is it Joe Biden’s fault?

By Louis Jacobson

• Gas prices have gone up under President Joe Biden, continuing an upward trend that began in May 2020.
• The increase is largely due to supply and demand, energy experts say, rather than p**********l policies.
• The c****av***s p******c prompted a big fall in oil demand and gasoline prices, due to declines in driving and air travel. As the economy has slowly rebounded, growing demand has boosted prices at the pump.

There’s been chatter online recently about the recent spike in gasoline prices — and whether President Joe Biden is to blame.

One Facebook post features a photograph of Biden with the caption, "Gas prices going up? How do you like me now?"

Another Facebook post uses a different picture of Biden and a thinly veiled comparison with former President Donald Trump. "Gas prices are soaring," the caption says. "But thank God there were no offensive tweets this week." These posts were f**gged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

Concern about rising gasoline prices also reached Fox News, where anchor Bill Hemmer said on March 1, "Gas prices are going higher, and if you don't think that Middle America takes notice of that, think again. We are seeing prices now that we frankly haven't seen in years."

Given the apparent alarm about gas prices, we thought it would be a good time to take a look at where they stand now, how they measure up historically and what’s causing the price movements.

Yes, according to federal data, gas prices have mostly been going up since they bottomed out at $1.87 a gallon in late April 2020. With gas prices reaching $2.72 in late February 2021, that’s an increase of 45% within about 10 months.

Part of that has come on Biden’s watch — prices have risen about 10% since he took office in January 2021. The bulk of the increase came under Trump.

Are gas prices higher than they’ve been "in years"? No. Today’s prices are the highest they’ve been in about 18 months.

Gas prices were similar to or higher than their current level for much of the time between October 2017 and January 2020 — that is, more than two years of Trump’s presidency. Prices were higher than today for all of the time between March 2018 and November 2018, and all of the time between April 2019 and August 2019.

Gasoline prices have a seasonal component: Demand rises during the summer and falls during the colder months, meaning that summer prices tend to be higher. That pattern is exacerbated by laws requiring more expensive gasoline formulations during the summer in order to limit emissions.

Looking just at winter levels, gasoline prices today are roughly in line with where they were at similar points in the calendar in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, when Trump was in office.

Some critics of Biden have said that his cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline early in his presidency would quickly result in higher gasoline prices. But we previously found that, for several reasons, that’s not the case.

For starters, the pipeline wasn’t operating yet. "Revoking it does nothing to today’s balance" of supply and demand, said Mark Finley, a fellow at the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University.

Any price impact from the pipeline decision, or from other Biden policies to limit f****l f**ls, would be "years down the road," said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, a website that tracks gas prices.

In addition, most of the oil to be carried by the Keystone XL pipeline would have been exported, meaning U.S. customers should see little direct effect on prices.

Experts said it was conceivable that Biden’s policies could eventually affect gas prices. But any impact wouldn’t be detectable in the recent gas price changes.

So why are gas prices rising?
In general, a president has limited control over the weekly and monthly shifts in gasoline prices. On a short-time horizon, gas prices depend mostly on global supply and demand.

On the supply side, the OPEC oil cartel and Russia have made voluntary production cuts, which has the effect of raising prices, Finley said.

In addition, Finley said, U.S. companies are investing less in finding new sources of oil. This is due to a combination of factors, including low oil prices over the past year, which discourage companies from developing new drilling sites, as well as growing pressure from environmentalists to shift away from f****l f**ls.

"Oil companies were hit hard in 2020," De Haan said. "They are not in growth mode. They are in survival mode."

But the biggest factor in the recent price spike has been the slow but steady economic recovery from the c****av***s p******c.

When the p******c began in the first quarter of 2020, the price of oil fell off a cliff. That reflected a plunge in demand: The p******c shut down some major industries for weeks, and sharply curbed the ability of people to travel (in airplanes) and commute to jobs (in cars). Crude oil prices closely track the price at the pump.

What the p******c took away, however, the recovery has begun to put back.

"The c****av***s numbers in every state are moving in the right direction," De Haan said. "We’re now seeing the highest demand since the p******c started. And now that demand is up, and oil production is not, that has pushed oil prices up."

It’s hard to say whether Biden deserves credit for the improving c****av***s outlook and economy. But De Haan said you could actually make the opposite argument than the Facebook posts do — that rising gas prices are a positive sign of growing consumer confidence.

"You could argue that the economic outlook has improved under Biden," he said, "providing a dose of optimism among consumers" that has led to rising prices at the pump.

Wonttakeitanymore

Would u be so generous of it was Trump? Not! Bribem is entirely at fault closing pipelines and forcing us to get gas somewhere else! U guys are pathetic!

Wonttakeitanymore

Hope ur outlook doesn’t break you lemming!

Liberty Tree

If it was Trump he would be feeding us on of his leftwing spin opinion pieces explaining how it was all Trump's fault.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Amazing, L-T. In spite of your purported omniscience, you remain bitter, dazed and confused.

The following came from the article above....

"The increase is largely due to supply and demand, energy experts say, rather than p**********l policies". This insinuates the policies of any/all president.

"In general, a president has limited control over the weekly and monthly shifts in gasoline prices. On a short-time horizon, gas prices depend mostly on global supply and demand".

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Sir, you seemed to have missed or ignored the following from the above article...

"Some critics of Biden have said that his cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline early in his presidency would quickly result in higher gasoline prices. But we previously found that, for several reasons, that’s not the case.

For starters, the pipeline wasn’t operating yet. 'Revoking it does nothing to today’s balance' of supply and demand, said Mark Finley, a fellow at the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University."

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Louis Jacobson, a Politifact "journalist", wrote that, did he? OK, I have here a grain of salt.

If you don't know it by now, you should - politics and facts don't mix. Kind of like mixing potassium with water.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

True 'nuf, Blade. But, if you don't realize it by now, you should: "Most people don't really want the t***h. They just want or need constant reassurance that what they believe is the t***h."

If it isn't what they want to believe, it can't be true.

BTW, season the article with all the salt you need. Even as I consider you one of the premiere contributors to OPP, I find myself taking a grain or two of salt upon/after reading some of your postings. C'est la vie.

ChJoe

According to Ed Wallace of Wheels fame, this is essentially correct, however, when Biden shut down the Keystone pipeline, most oil companies refineries reduced their output in anticipation of other stupid moves related to oil and gas. That contributed to a decrease in supply and thus an increase in prices, worse than it should have been.

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

A hasty generalization is a logical fallacy.

If you don't know this by now, you should, there are still many people on this planet who are principled, virtuous, have integrity, and based on a moral absolute, have a true sense of right and wrong.

Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault would be proud of you. Postmodern philosophy poses "t***h" as subjective, no ontic referent, no objective standard, no propositional t***h. Postmodern philosophy treat language and morality in the same way.

Language, for example, is based on an epistemology that holds to a limitless instability of words, texts are stripped of their meaning and words are given no point of reference. The ground is always shifting in speech, in thought, and in any form of propositional t***h. As postmodernist Paul de Mann put it, "Rhetoric radically suspends logic and opens up vertiginous possibilities for referential aberrations." IOW, what de Mann is really saying is it takes you to dizzying heights of meaninglessness.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Thanks for the input. That would seem a valid point, 'cept for the questionable "most oil companies refiners reduced their output in anticipation of other stupid moves related to oil and gas". But, if true, that makes sense

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

I'm not sure how hasty Friedrich Nietzsche was when quoted, ‘Sometimes people don't want to hear the t***h because they don't want their illusions destroyed.’

BTW, it seems you may have missed my added edit of the post to which you responded.

ChJoe

His words were something like "who wouldn't reduce their oil and gas production in the face of an administration willing to sacrifice thousands of jobs and millions of dollars invested for such little reason. Lets face it, when the president acts in such a stupid way (or something like that) we should expect other i***tic things to be done."

A definite paraphrase but the word stupid was clearly used. Ed pretty much knows everything. He also does Great Moments in Rock and Roll and The Backside of History. He has also pointed out the futility of going green in Texas when we are sitting on enough natural clean burning gas to power a everything here and a huge chink of the country. He has some choice words for those who manage the Texas Power grid. And per him, electric vehicles will never be more than local use vehicles and f****l f**ls will play a major roll in cross country driving as most of our goods are still shipped across country in big rig trucks. Per him, the goals of shifting away from f****l f**ls is a pipe dream.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Life is going well for our Family, but thank you for your concern.

BTW, lemming: pot...kettle...black.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

I've also expressed a few choice words for those who manage the Texas Power grid.