Lê Vĩnh Tài | EOU – 19. Ukarine is not the whole world

Lê Vĩnh Tài, the Vietnamese poet and translator born 1966 in Buon Ma Thuot, Daklak, Vietnam. The retired doctor is still a resident of the Western …

Lê Vĩnh Tài | EOU – 19. Ukarine is not the whole world

« A terra não é do homem, o homem é da terra. O homem não teceu a teia da vida, ele é apenas um fio. O que quer que ele faça com a teia da vida, ele …

Sabedoria Indígena « Você está ensinando a seus filhos o que ensinamos a nossos filhos? Que a terra é nossa mãe? O que acontece com a terra acontece …

« A terra não é do homem, o homem é da terra. O homem não teceu a teia da vida, ele é apenas um fio. O que quer que ele faça com a teia da vida, ele …

Republicans Wrongly Blame Biden for Rising Gas Prices – The New York Times

The primary reason for rising gas prices over the past year is the coronavirus pandemic and its disruptions to global supply and demand.

“Covid changed the game, not President Biden,” said Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, which tracks gasoline prices. “U.S. oil production fell in the last eight months of President Trump’s tenure. Is that his fault? No.”

“The pandemic brought us to our knees,” Mr. De Haan added.

In the early months of 2020, when the virus took hold, demand for oil dried up and prices plummeted, with the benchmark price for crude oil in the United States falling to negative $37.63 that April. In response, producers in the United States and around the world began decreasing output.

As pandemic restrictions loosened worldwide and economies recovered, demand outpaced supply. That was “mostly attributable” to the decision by OPEC Plus, an alliance of oil-producing countries that controls about half the world’s supply, to limit increases in production, according to the U.S. Energy Information AdministrationDomestic production also remains below prepandemic levels, as capital spending declined and investors remained reluctant to provide financing to the oil industry.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has only compounded the issues.

“When you throw a war on top of this, this is possibly the worst escalation you can have of this,” said Abhiram Rajendran, the head of oil market research at Energy Intelligence, an energy information company. “You’re literally pouring gasoline on general inflationary pressure.”

These factors are largely out of Mr. Biden’s control, experts agreed, though they said he had not exactly sent positive signals to the oil and gas industry and its investors by vowing to reduce emissions and fossil fuel reliance.

Mr. De Haan said the Biden administration was “clearly less friendly” to the industry, which may have indirectly affected investor attitudes. But overall, he said, that stance has played a “very, very small role pushing gas prices up.”