Oil prices were at basically the ideal price when he took office. Everything he’s doing is only driving that price higher, which oil producers don’t want because it hurts demand.
Oil is just in a precarious position with supply and demand.
High prices will accelerate demand destruction, as people and businesses move to cheaper energy sources, like solar/wind/geothermal/nuclear, plus spur the continued development of grid scale storage and demand management technologies. Sustained high prices could cause lifestyle and consumption habits to change, too: fewer gas guzzlers, fewer supercommuters, improved shipping efficiency, etc.
Low prices would put strain on the finances of producers, whether for profit corporations in the West or state owned (or closely affiliated) producers in places like Saudi Arabia or Russia, and would weaken those countries’ influence on geopolitical issues.
There’s a reason they want a strong cartel, which is what OPEC tries to be, but that cartel has been weakened considerably by non-OPEC Plus nations becoming huge producers. OPEC cut supply to try to hurt Biden, but it ended up being a handout to American, Canadian, and Norwegian companies, by propping up prices while losing market share. Meanwhile, sanctions on Russia (and Iran and Venezuela) add a bunch of friction (and some cost) to their exports, so that they need higher prices to break even.
For the first time in modern history, societies have access to non-fossil-fuel energy sources in competitive volume and price, to where an oil oligopoly can’t push around consumers. Trump can’t put that back in the bottle.
Oil prices were at basically the ideal price when he took office. Everything he’s doing is only driving that price higher, which oil producers don’t want because it hurts demand.
Oil is just in a precarious position with supply and demand.
High prices will accelerate demand destruction, as people and businesses move to cheaper energy sources, like solar/wind/geothermal/nuclear, plus spur the continued development of grid scale storage and demand management technologies. Sustained high prices could cause lifestyle and consumption habits to change, too: fewer gas guzzlers, fewer supercommuters, improved shipping efficiency, etc.
Low prices would put strain on the finances of producers, whether for profit corporations in the West or state owned (or closely affiliated) producers in places like Saudi Arabia or Russia, and would weaken those countries’ influence on geopolitical issues.
There’s a reason they want a strong cartel, which is what OPEC tries to be, but that cartel has been weakened considerably by non-OPEC Plus nations becoming huge producers. OPEC cut supply to try to hurt Biden, but it ended up being a handout to American, Canadian, and Norwegian companies, by propping up prices while losing market share. Meanwhile, sanctions on Russia (and Iran and Venezuela) add a bunch of friction (and some cost) to their exports, so that they need higher prices to break even.
For the first time in modern history, societies have access to non-fossil-fuel energy sources in competitive volume and price, to where an oil oligopoly can’t push around consumers. Trump can’t put that back in the bottle.