Column By John Young
For the last four months, every time I gritted my teeth to refuel the car, I recalled a memory from three years ago: “Biden did this” stickers slapped on pumps next to the cost of a fill-up.
In Biden’s last year in office, gasoline averaged slightly over $3 a gallon, says the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The other day at the pump, pleased to report, I saw a sticker saying I could blame my $4.30-a-gallon purchase on the artificially orange man in the White House.
Blaming the president for gas prices is standard fare for those on the outs, no matter the year or season. However, when prices rocket out of sight due to a president’s tempestuous armed indulgence in the Middle East that wracks the global economy, that blame has nowhere else to reside.
The Great Liar says gasoline will be back to pre-war prices shortly. Sorry, but even when the Strait of Hormuz is free and clear, industry experts say that won’t happen.
Time magazine reports more than 500 vessels are waiting to leave the Persian Gulf, and a fifth of them are toting crude. Disarming mines in the Strait is the biggest challenge.
All of this begs the question: Why haven’t U.S. oil companies come to our rescue? More curiously, why hadn’t they come to the rescue of the president who resides in their deep pockets?
Why? Simply because they have no good reason.
As the war entered its third month in May, The New York Times reported that fewer U.S. rigs were producing than at the start.
Unbelievably, energy production might decline in 2026, says the Energy Department. You read that right.
The fact is, those sky-high prices are going into the bank rather than triggering emergency production.
Most industry sources contacted by the Times said oil production would be flat or rise by less than 2 percent this year, “if it rose at all.”
Oil companies base production decisions more on projections six months or more out than on prices, putting Americans in dire straits.
Add to this equation the myth of “energy security” — that oil produced here stays here to serve us. That’s a lie. It goes to anyone anywhere with the cash – you know, the free market.
“Our oil” effectively goes into one giant vat – global energy reserves. It is a fungible commodity, like soybeans and baseball cards. Have you heard of the free market?
“Drill, Baby, drill.”
Republicans can chant themselves silly. Despite what Big Oil did to fund this president’s return to power, it is not coming to his, or consumers’, rescue at this tender moment.
How sweetly ironic it would be, with this president having done everything his Big Carbon masters desired, that gas prices would help end the GOP lock on Congress this November and expose His Bigness to impeachment.
I know. Blame Biden for those prices. Blame Obama. Blame George Soros.
Americans know who and what is to blame.
Set aside pain at the pump and know the cost of the Iran “excursion” would leave Carl Sagan with cottonmouth.
Billions and billions and billions.
The cost of military operations is $113 billion and spiraling (iran-cost-ticker.com). Someone decades away from paying taxes – most likely those yet to enroll in kindergarten – will have to foot the bill.
Last week, the Pentagon said it needs an $80 billion supplemental appropriation just to get through the summer.
And so it goes, up and up, like energy costs.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the surge in energy prices has wiped out a year and a half of wage gains for the average American worker.
You can bet your house payment that these costs wiped out whatever tax benefits most of us got from the Horrible No Good Very Bad Bill – the one in which oil titans got monster tax breaks.
I don’t want to hear a word from Republicans about energy scarcity and costs when they looked the other way while this president went full search-and-destroy for increasingly cost-effective solar and wind.
Instead, the serf of Big Carbon in the White House directs tax dollars to a coal industry that electricity providers say is too expensive – and too dirty – to revive.
The unnerving prospect for this president and his party is that all they’ve done to facilitate dirty power — meaning everything in their power — isn’t going to get them out of the mess they’ve made.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email him at jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
