FULL THROTTLE, NO BRAKES – OPEC cuts production. The war in Ukraine. Global inflation. Biden administration in public clash with oil companies. California offline refineries. It’s all on top of a recent spike in gas prices at the worst possible time for President Joe Biden and his party — less than three weeks before the midterm elections.
The Biden administration has stuck with the idea that they are making energy decisions based on the political calendar. But they are aware that the price of gas correlates quite directly with Democrats’ approval ratings.
“Commodity traders see [rising prices] as a temporary issue,” said Ed Hirs, an economist and Energy Fellow at the University of Houston. “The unfortunate thing for the president is that this happened right before the midterms. That’s just bad luck.”
Temporary or not, Biden is trying to pull as many levers as he can to address the situation. The problem is that oil markets are difficult to predict – or influence – because they are driven by a market that moves based on global events and forces beyond each country’s control.
“When it comes to global oil markets, who knows?” says Andrew Campbell, executive director of the Energy Institute at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
However, the president is looking for ways to improve his chances. On Wednesday, Biden released the last of the 180 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve he authorized in March. He has continued to attack oil companies for profits they can use to lower their prices. And he has urged OPEC leaders – particularly Saudi Arabia – to delay their decision to cut oil production.
Using America’s oil reserves may well have helped to keep the problem under control. But whether Biden is explicitly playing politics with the nation’s oil reserves — as Republican Sen. John Barrasso has accused him of doing — or not, releasing more oil won’t make much of a difference in the short-term at the pump in the coming weeks. next. .
“There is a clear disconnect between upstream pricing [of oil] and lower priced, refined products [of gasoline].” says Hirs.
So even though Biden may release more oil, or crude, unrefined oil, that doesn’t always directly correlate to a change in price. The amount of oil available at any one time is far from the only factor in determining gas prices – other global events can easily disrupt the market.
We’ve had to divert oil to our European allies, refineries aren’t producing at the same rate as in the past, and Russian oil production is down, likely by about a million barrels of oil per day, according to Hirs. “We’re at war, we’re just not shooting right now,” he says.
All of this adds up to a volatile market for oil and gas prices that are prone to rapid and sharp increases.
“Prices are high because of global events,” according to Campbell. “The idea that any country can influence this global situation seems overly optimistic.”
So should Biden throw up his hands or cross his fingers and hope for the best? Not enough.
“In the short term, the main thing is that [the administration] we have to try to explain to the public what’s going on,” says Campbell.
That explanation might be more effective if it comes from a public-facing energy czar, something the Biden administration currently lacks; Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has not been a regular, well-known public face on the issue.
“No one is visible in the administration who has ever drilled a well,” says Hirs.
For now, Biden is stuck in a political quagmire. He doesn’t want to overreact to this current surge and slow down his priority of switching to more renewable energy. But he likely needs gasoline prices to fall rapidly if he wants his party to retain control of Congress — and thus enable him to pursue a strong agenda for the next two years.
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— Federal court rules Georgia prosecutors can compel Lindsey Graham to testify: Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to sway the 2020 election can compel Sen. Lindsey Graham to testify before a grand jury investigating his phone calls to top Georgia election officials, a court ruled today federal appeals court. A three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the South Carolina Republican’s claim that he is constitutionally immune from such a question.
— The Pentagon will pay for service members to travel for abortions: The Pentagon will pay for service members to travel to get abortions, in a move the military says will ease the burden on troops who want to get reproductive care and are stationed in states where the procedure is no longer legal, it announced today. department. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin today directed the Defense Department to establish travel and transportation permits to ensure service members and their dependents have access, according to a memo.
— Trump is closely followed to address his Jan. 6 committee call: Trump has hired a firm to engage with the Jan. 6 select committee on his upcoming call for him. The firm, The Dhillon Law Group, already represents numerous witnesses who have appeared before the committee, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump ally Seb Gorka and Women for America First co-founder Amy Kremer. A person familiar with the situation said the committee is now tasked with negotiating the terms of Trump’s subpoena, which it voted to issue last week.
– Loeffler‘The texts after the 2020 elections are released, raising new investigative questions: A log of text messages sent and received by former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) in the weeks before the Jan. 6 Capitol attack is raising questions about possible unauthorized access to investigative material related to the probes of the 2020 election. The messages, reviewed by POLITICO, shed light on Loeffler’s shifting political calculus as she weighed whether to mount a challenge to the 2020 results at Trump’s urging. She announced she would contest the results, but ultimately decided against it after a violent mob ransacked the Capitol the day after she lost her re-election bid to Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.).
— CDC advisors recommend adding Covid vaccines to routine immunization schedules for children, adults: The CDC’s independent vaccine advisors voted 15-0 today to add most of the Covid-19 vaccines offered in the US to the childhood, adolescent and adult immunization schedules. Immunization schedules, which are updated each fall before they go into effect the following year, consolidate all of the CDC’s vaccine recommendations into one document for states to use as a guide for school entry requirements and busy doctors . The additions formalize recommendations the CDC has already made for vaccination against Covid in individuals 6 months of age and older for injections that the FDA has approved or authorized for emergency use.
THE FALL OF TAMET – Liz Truss has resigned as UK prime minister after six chaotic weeks in office, saying she “cannot deliver the mandate” she was elected to. Eleni Courea AND Matt Honeycombe-Foster.
In a brief but dramatic televised statement outside Downing Street no. 10 today, Truss admitted she could no longer have the support of her party and that a snap Tory leadership election will be held next week to choose her successor.
Truss’s resignation after just 44 days makes her the shortest-serving prime minister in British history – a remarkable and unwanted label she could hardly have imagined when she was elected leader by Tory MPs on September 6.
But in less than two months in office she caused a meltdown in financial markets, sacked two of her most senior ministers, was forced to make numerous policy U-turns and ultimately lost the support of her MPs.
“I cannot surrender the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party,” Truss said in her statement today. “I have therefore spoken to His Majesty the King to inform him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party.”
THE BRITISH ARE COMING — For decades, one of America’s main exports has been entertainment, especially of the television and film kind. But now, Americans are increasingly tuning in to British television, which American entertainment companies are trying to recreate or spin off. From The Crown to Great British Bake Off to Love Island, read on Alison Herman in Ringer for the British Invasion.
FIRST AGREEMENT – On the afternoon that Parler, a conservative social media platform, announced its acquisition by Ye, better known as Kanye West, the site emailed hundreds of VIP members to excitedly share the news. Meredith McGraw, Jordan Carney AND Rebecca Kern.
There were only two problems.
Parler overlooked blind-CC email addresses and inadvertently leaked the contact information of at least 10 lawmakers and many other conservative stars. The other problem: some of those “VIPs” had no idea why they were being labeled as such, confessing that they had little or no connection to the app in question, let alone special status there.
The episode and the ensuing confusion — a company spokesman declined to address questions about who compiled the list and the criteria behind it — has created a headache for Parler during what should have been a festive time. Since its launch in 2018, the site has sought to position itself as a champion of free speech, recruiting Trump associates and conservative luminaries with a promise to be the essential social media counterweight to the likes of Facebook and Twitter.
But the botched email raises questions about how big Parler’s influence really is as Ye prepares to buy it, given that the VIP list includes general media addresses and some that were old or defunct. It also provides a window into the often chaotic nature of the conservative media ecosystem, where a number of different platforms are vying for audience share and industry dominance, feeding a narrow set of influential figures and relaxing editorial guardrails.
Read all about the Parler and Kanye West acquisition here.
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