Biden inflation at the gas pump growing

 Kevin Cochrane:

If you think the highest overall inflation rate in 40 years of 7% is bad, get ready for a real shock coming to a pump near you.  Oil prices are surging so much that, ironically, even the "Green New Deal" president is begging global and domestic producers alike to ramp up production and pump, pump, pump!  And despite his releasing millions of barrels of crude from the strategic oil reserve and pleading with oil-rich nations to increase their output, prices continue to climb.

In early December, oil was trading at $65 per barrel.  Today, it's over $90, which is more than a 50% increase in a little over a couple of months.  This past week, the average price of gasoline in the United States hit a seven-year high at the pump, but there's still much more to come.  And while the U.S. Energy Information Administration these past few weeks predicted that prices will now decline continuously well into 2023, oil traders are pricing for $100 per barrel and higher in the next several months.

The go-to scapegoat for every problem the administration faces seems to be COVID, and it's not at all different with this self-imposed oil crisis.  Yes, demand for petroleum did drop at the peak of the virus — and by peak, think a year ago, when weekly deaths were much higher but fewer people had COVID.  This brief pause in demand held oil prices down, but not for long and not enough to cause producers to shutter production.  No, the reduction in domestic pumping has nothing to do with virology and everything to do with politics.

Imagine being the CEO of an oil company listening to the past year of antagonism from the Biden crowd — canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, suspending new drilling leases on federal land, and pledging to reduce U.S. carbon emission by 50% in the next seven years.  Would you commit millions — nay, billions of dollars to drilling and developing oil fields?  Nope!  And that's why domestic production is down 1.2 million barrels per day over the past twelve months — not COVID.

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Biden's energy policies are as idiotic as the Green New Deal they are based on.  He is driving up the cost by killing domestic production and increasing imports from OPEC and Russia.  That is just nuts.  In the process, he is harming US national security and funding Putin's aggression in Ukraine.  He is also harming the US economy and feeding inflation.