LogFAQs > #963387423

Mensis posted...

Secondly I was absolutely not taking the side of Putin he is a war criminal and a monster.

If you are not taking the side of Putin, why are you parroting his propaganda points?

Putin loves the fact that Republicans are trying to score political points on Biden for high gas prices, because for every attack they make, the unity of the American response and the will to tough out the consequences of sanctioning Russia gets weaker. This is *exactly* what he wants to happen.

Your original point wasn't even based on facts. Biden didn't "shut down pipelines". About the only high-profile pipeline he kiboshed was Phase 4 of Keystone XL, a pipeline that wouldn't be online today even if construction had gone ahead. Aside from that, the Biden admin has been issuing drilling leases and permits at a rate *faster* than the Trump admin.

Which hasn't helped, because of course it hasn't helped - the US is already set to have record levels of production this year or next. The issue has nothing to do with the US - it has to do with the facts that:
a) Demand has spiked after two years of lull due to COVID-19. Now that people are travelling again - for work and for pleasure - gas and fuel consumption rates are way up.
b) The oil and gas industry, like everyone else, laid off a lot of people during the pandemic and is now scrambling to try and find workers to get things back up and running again. I work in oil and gas, in a side of the industry that's usually fairly insulated from the boom/bust cycle, and even we can't get enough people at the moment.
c) Russia is basically being cut out of a huge chunk of the global market. Russia is the world's third-largest supplier of oil, so them going through an economic crisis is going to have massive ramifications on the global market, regardless of what anyone else does.
d) OPEC is still largely sitting on the sidelines right now and has refused to up production because they seem to be comfortable with the current level of demand. Given that OPEC controls roughly half of the world's oil production, they continue to hold a controlling stake in oil prices and nothing the US does can compare with their influence.