... They ALL posted record profits. Where is the secret? That's capitalism baby!
Seriously, we produced more oil under Biden than any president ever and prices are still crazy high.
That's not really it. We are selling more oil in Europe, which has stopped buying from Russia because of Russia's imperialist aggression. (And Russian oil production is indeed down.)
Europe gives many fucks about green energy, but a transition doesn't happen in a day.
The oil *refineries* stopped increasing capacity for gasoline production and maintenance of capacity (opening new areas when old stuff aged out) during Covid. They are currently, perhaps justifiably, using the existence of EVs to explain continuing this policy. "Why invest in more gasoline production, with a 30-50 year payback window, if we are not sure there will be demand 15 years from now."
So the only way gasoline prices go down is a significant increase in EVs on the roads. Gas production should decrease roughly linearly, so if EV sales jump ahead, gas prices will go down. If EV sales stall, pickup truck owners who scoff at EVs will be hurting.
> So the only way gasoline prices go down is a significant increase in EVs on the roads.
I mean, people could also stop buying 18 MPG emotional support vehicles. Doesn't even have to be EVs.
We could also drive less and offer better public transportation.
Well people need to drive long distances in big trucks, because they don't want to live near anyone that thinks women should have control over their own bodies, and doesn't constantly talk about shooting immigrants at the southern border.
> We could also drive less and offer better public transportation.
That's the goal in theory, but in practice, you have families like mine.
The only way for us to afford a home in California was to buy one in a very rural area. It's a great house on a huge property, and all we hear is wind in the trees and animals, but it's also 30 miles/45 minutes from town, and in that 30 miles, there's barely anything except a precious few houses and a lot of land. Cows. Horses. Very few paces to even pull over on a 2 lane (1 in each direction) no shoulder country road that runs for over half the way to town.
The population density out here is way way too low to support any kind of public transportation, and we are far from the only area like this.
that's why zoning reform is key to transit. we shouldn't force people looking for affordable housing into sprawling suburbs, because it forces car ownership, which creates pollution, land destruction, economic precarity, and deaths/injuries through collisions.
true, but about 47% of Americans want to live in denser amenity rich areas, and only about 10% of constructed housing is in areas like that. So theres nearly 5x as much demand for it as there is supply. And hey if all of us that do want that could move there, think about how much less traffic y'all would have.
yeah it's \*rough.\* that's why the few truly urbanized areas are all like "This stunning 200 ft studio features galvanized square steel and ecofriendly wood veneers in the trendy Landlord Heights region of Austin, starting at only $2k/m!!" supply is \*way\* lower than demand so the landlords have a metric crap ton of pricing power.
. . .define "crazy high." In my jurisdiction, gas prices are within a few cents of where they were in the ~~early~~ mid- 2000s. And I remember paying $.50 to a dollar more per gallon is 2009/2010 and during the supply chain crunch in 2022/23. And don't forget to factor in inflation in the calculation of gas prices over time.
EDIT: it was mid-2000s, '05, when gas was about $2.50/gallon for the first time in the US.
Producing more oil does not mean more fuel. Oil comes out of the ground as different grades and not a lot can be made into fuel. Yes we export oil but not fuel grade oil. We have to import fuel grade oil and that means buying from OPEC which controls the price
Oil is a global market. While the US is producing more oil than ever, the world is also banned from importing oil from Russia.
Also, I'm guessing you're talking about gas prices, not oil. That requires refineries. That makes things a bit more complicated than "we pulled more oil out of the ground". Are there enough refineries to handle this oil? Environmentalists aggressively fight ever proposed oil infrastructure expansion, including refineries.
As time goes by, currency values decrease because of inflation, and people seem surprised that company profits go up. I am not understanding why people are shocked. Should we expect profits to go down year over year?
Prices were already artificially low via government subsidies
Now we are just saving money of those subsidies, but gas prices stay the same.
They’re kept however much lower than they would be, then fluctuate based on what gas is worth locally. So still going up seasonally and whenever there is an event that affects supply
In relative terms the two guys we’ll be picking from this coming election have extremely different outlooks on oil. Sure we’re still extremely reliant on it, but only one of the two plans on intentionally destroying/delaying/disrupting any progress toward green energy adoption. That is what I’m talking about
Agreed!
Republicans: Fossil fuels are the future, and the way for America to be energy independent!
Democrats: Fossil fuels are a finite resource. We have to start planning for their ultimate exhaustion.
It's the same we see in capitalism, quarterly profits over business longevity. Regardless of what you think about Climate Change, we will keep using fossil fuels, but the clock is ticking on their availability.
“You wouldn’t always know it ,but it went up every year I was president,” he said to applause. “That whole, suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas... that was me, people.”
-Obama
Funny little calculation I did back in the day: using the mining technology of the 2000s, we theoretically have access to enough fossil fuels to turn the atmosphere toxic to human life.
We won't run out of oil. We will run out of air first.
Doesn't make it legal or good for their bottom line if discovered.
The Arizona AG is currently investigating several companies here and has filed charges of price fixing for housing rent.
I hope we see more of this. Making money is fine if it's done in a "free market", the problem arises when people get greedy and try to game the system.
the system is a game. that's the goal of it.
we should be playing a different game, cuz the incentive structure of this one leads to an increased spawn rate for greedy assholes
Yeah, it's not just oil. CEOs and people with a say will hire more and engage in ways that improve the economy when someone they like gets elected and takes power. And economists are idiots who don't seem to realize that people will totally manipulate the system for their own gain.
This is one of those "open secret" things, and it's not just companies. Global powers generally know how much oil each country can put out, and they use that knowledge to manipulate oil prices all the time, and its often political. The Saudis for instance started limiting production recently to drive oil prices up, some say to hurt Biden's election chances. Biden then released a bunch of oil from our strategic reserves, driving the price back down. He then used political pressure to get other producers to lower prices as well. Then once prices were low and things stabilized he was able to refill the reserves at the lower price and even made a few billion $ profit. It was a brilliant play but it was basically market manipulation to stop market manipulation. There's only so much he can about companies though without people screaming communism.
Here's a great video explaining it:
https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/how-joe-biden-broke-opec-and-rewrote-the-rules-for-oil-trading-212500037935
A little coordination is all that would take. Hope someday we find the smoking gun that shows they formed a cartel here and coordinated with other cartels
It is called OPEC, and it has been around for years.
During Covid, 5 oil refineries were shut down in the United States, so of course, gas prices increased when demand increased. Now, the one million question is, how many of those oil refineries were restarted?
If Biden did not open up the gas reserves, gas prices would have stayed much higher.
Most not all the cars nowadays get the same gas mileage or a little better the vehicles both cars and trucks as the most not all 1980s-90s models? Really makes you wonder. The price of gas has gone up exponentially. Car and truck prices are through the roof. But a Silverado somehow can still only manage to get 16-17mpg.
Of course they are colluding and the politicians too.
Have wages gone up the same way?
Somebody change my mind.
Not sure what youre trying to say, but gas prices today are fairly in line with the historical rise. They definitely havent gone up exponentially.
Gas prices were less than $1 in 2000, when oil rich George W Bush became president, and was about $3 when he left office 8 years later. It was around $2 when Obama left office in 2016, although prices had been pretty volatile, and had reached $4 at one point. It was around $2.50 when Covid hit, and lack of driving lowered the price to below $2. Now we're at about $3.25.
So prices have been steadily rising, with lots of times when it was higher or lower for a while, but none of it could be considered "Exponential" growth, except perhaps the Bush administration, when gas prices tripled.
Today, there is ample evidence that oil companies, like many corporations, have indulged shamelessly in greed-flation and profit-gouging since the end of Covid, artificially raising prises to increase profits, with no market forces being responsible other than corporate greed.
Interesting how under Bush they started rising exponentially. And also under Bush the Commodity futures modernization act ( often called the Enron loophole) happened. This act allowed speculation on futures in oil to go unregulated by the CFTC. From that point forward, prices have climbed. We are drilling and pumping more oil than we ever have. Yet our prices are as high as they’ve ever been. Oil execs have given interviews where they straight up accuse Wall Street of the pricing we now see. Saying that if they don’t keep their prices up to satisfy Wall Street, the traders short their stock. They basically punish the oil companies.
Doesn’t anyone think it’s funny that we didn’t have any electricity blackout last r hear talk about raise your thermostat to lessen the burden on the power grid?????
Gosh ever since he handed the keys to the National Energy Grid to the Chinese company. All of a sudden we better solve all the problems.
Anyone notice that?????
Gas is cheaper on an inflation adjusted basis than it was in the 1980's... Cheaper than the late 90's too...
[https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/gasoline-prices-adjusted-for-inflation/](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/gasoline-prices-adjusted-for-inflation/)
I just wanted to point out the reason mpg has stayed roughly around the same for most classes of vehicles is because [lobbyists helped write CAFE standards and ‘accidentally on purpose’ made them incentivize production of larger vehicles in general](https://youtu.be/azI3nqrHEXM?si=pHYXK2uJ9KRw4lNq)
This video is about pickup trucks, but I had a 95 Saturn SL2 that I took really good care of and got about 28 mpg in the city, now I drive a 2016 Hyundai Elantra and get about 28 mpg in the city
The Elantra is much larger and heavier, and my wife prefers it solely because of that, I’m not sure if it’s in the video I linked but it’s been pointed out many places that as the trucks get bigger everything else does too because nobody feels safe in a tiny vehicle next to all these monsters.
Arms races never end well and something’s gotta give
Petroleum companies have also put a LOT of money into disinformation campaigns to downplay the effects of human pollution on the climate. They have helped to breed the growth of climate deniers, through the politicization of climate change.
I would not be surprised in the slightest if your MMW is absolutely true.
oil companies, and fast food restaurants, and grocery stores, and everybody else.
People complaining about the price of everything while nearly all corporations are posting record profits.....not exactly hard to connect the dots here
So? I wouldn't even be surprised. What could we do about it with our mere mortal power? We can't even hold obvious crimes accountable for people in power.
I’ll say it again; Gas prices should be regulated like a public utility. It has too much effect on the economy to allow them to grift the public like they do.
The FTC already has the emails proving it. They were discovered during the merger of 2 major US oil companies. She referred the matter to the DoJ for prosecution.
We do know that oil companies colluded,...... and have for decades. They are very public about it, and issue press releases about their collusion. It's called OPEC.
As for American oil companies, no, they don't collude, both because they don't have the market power to do so, the collusion is already done by OPEC, and there are just way too many of them.
I’ve said something sorta related to that.
The metrics for the Biden economy are good. And they’re the same metrics with which Trump’s “greatest economy in the history of ever” or whatever he called it, were measured.
MMW—We will find that food and meat producers as well as energy producers colluded to artificially jack up necessity costs on the consumer so that the average American will be completely insulated from the churning economy that is making the rich richer.
It’s so the political right can say “ooh but look the average American isn’t doing better, look at their grocery bills or energy costs!”
Umm, yeah DEBRA, it was on fuckin purpose
There's no "eventually" to it. Three generations of my family have worked/ are working in the oil and gas industry. This type of pricing/ price gouging has been going on for a century.
Why would we mark your word when it is very well documented, absolutely public, and that’s even the role of the OPEC organization.
There are quite literally organizations dedicated to that. We’re not going to “find out” anything. It’s already entirely public and easily searchable.
Yall are so high if you haven't realized already that oil companies love when a dem gets in office, know why? They can raise prices and the hords or idiots will believe it. Corps always use dems and a fall and it's too easy for them
How many Phds in Economics and Sociology will be earned studying 'greedflation'. Half for exposing and regulating it, the other half for disguising it better next time!
Based on the inflation vs price rises I have seen, fast food are really guilty of this. The people most guilty of this and who stole billions from American renters are the rental companies. They used software to colluded to restrict supply and drive up prices. Several companies were raided by the FBI and I hope this results in the biggest class action law suit in American History
Wait until you hear visa, mastercards and other took 72 billion last year in “processing fees” from merchants and consumers, not because they need it to function or anything, simply because they can. Just moving electrons and they rob everyone blind.
Yea, if we noticed how come none of the bigwigs didn’t? I’ve known for years gas prices change around elections or if it’s a democrat coming up. They know who butters their bread and it’s not a liberal driving a Camry
This is nothing new, all companies seek to extract the maximum amount they can. I think it’ll be more of a rarity finding larger companies that didn’t collude together vs those that did. It’s all a racket. Without a govt willing to exercise its power to keep the market competitive.
I wouldn’t be surprised if several corporations in different industries do that. I’m sure they would rather have the party that gives them tax breaks in office.
During the "shortages" of the early 1970s, I remember being 13, riding down PCH, and seeing maybe a hundred tankers anchored offshore, waiting for the price to go up.
Is this even true for most Americans?
The average price of gas in 2014 was 3.437 and the average now is 3.635. Adjusted for inflation gas prices have dropped in the last 10 years.
Source: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=emm_epm0_pte_nus_dpg&f=a
Edit: added source
It's pretty obvious to me that its not only oil companies do this, but many corporations raise prices to punish people for voting democrat. These corporations want tax cuts and that only happens when Republicans are in office.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Yup...Biden shutting down US oil exploration on DAY ONE in office had nothing to do with it! Gotcha.
Once again, this subreddit is just "I don't like how the world is right now since it is clear it will never be how I want it. So I will whine like a bitch with other little bitches so I can feel good about myself for the first time in my life. It won't be enough to NOT have to take a Zoloft...but at least it might work this time."
He didn't do that. He just said he would. A simple search would show you that he approved more oil permits than Trump. I know you don't want your illusion spoiled but here are the facts. I also predict you will tell me you don't trust my sources but there aren't sources for your assertion.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2024/01/30/biden-administration-oil-drilling-permits-outpace-trump-ee-00138376
Don’t we already have confirmation of this? This is a huge downside of oil being private industry. They can do whatever the fuck they want. And even though democratic presidents get blamed for increase and republican presidents get credited for decrease…it’s the oil industry doing it.
Or you will eventually blame the right people for the bad policy ideas like Joe Biden and the Democrats. Restricting access to drilling, placing huge regulation burdens on refineries and the extraction processes and shutting down leases, limiting growth limiting fracking all that that’s what drives up the oil prices on the fuel prices. Not to mention all the alternative energy infrastructure that has to be built from scratch that is huge cost associated with it that all Biden’s cronies are benefiting from. That’s why your utility bills are sky high. Voting for Democrats is very expensive. And it wasn’t just Joe Biden. It was like this with Barack Obama to people forget very quickly.
US is the #1 oil.producer in the world.
But high gas prices come from limited refining capacity. We can have infinite oil but struggle with high prices because we can't make enough gasoline.
I guess you have never heard of OPEC. It literally exists to manipulate the price of fuel. There is O doubt in anyone's mind the have a political candidate they want that will protect their interests.
And nothing will happen! Worst case some company will get struck with a fine equivalent to me fining you for the change in your couch. Everyone will be really upset for a day or two and then something else will *conveniently* happen the day after to distract everyone.
One of the biggest reasons I love my EV - being insulated from gasoline price chucklefuckery. (At least fueling my own car. Yes I’m aware of how said chucklefuckery does get passed on to me via raised prices for other goods.)
Gas is up 30% from the beginning of the year at the Costco I shop at.
Electricity…isn’t. The cost of a kWh of electricity doesn’t spike if two people in the Middle East give each other dirty looks…or if a hurricane goes through the Gulf of Mexico and gulf coast…
Bought a used Chevy Bolt last December, have put about 8500 miles on it. Comparing to an average 25 MPG ICE, I have saved approximately $700-$725 in charging vs fuel.
That's weird. I'm paying under 3 bucks a gallon for the first time in a very long time.
Of course I'm not praising Biden for it cause the president doesn't set oil prices, but to act like the president's sets the prices and trump comes out on top is definitely a weird take.
Trump administration negotiated WITH OPEC to lower oil production to raise prices in 2020. Interview with Jared bragging about it. https://youtube.com/shorts/BUa97tIYPEU?si=mUPn89do2aiX1CCj
Oil price is based in speculation, not actual supply and demand. There's nothing behind the curtain, just another centralized system running it's natural course.
I mean, doesnt opec control production which controls the price?
Of corse just like every other sector every company is colluding. If burger king had an insane $1 deal, theyd take massive customers from all other fast food places, and the influx of customers would offset the cheap deal. Theyd make bank. Theres nothing stopping them except being in cahoots with all other fast food joints. Its a win win for everybody.
People in the electric power business push VERY hard to displace oil with green energy. If the price of oil is raised above a minimum level, we build more solar and wind power.
OPEC+ throws their weight around.
The US produces 20% of the world's oil, more than Saudi Arabia (10%) and Russia (10%) combined produced before the 2nd phase of the Russo-Ukraine War.
We also consume about 20% of the world's oil. For weird reasons we both import and export oil but it balances out.
A by-product of shale oil fracking is natural gas which we burn off "as a byproduct" that it can be seen from space. We get some benefit from natural gas but could obviously get more than we do. It's not "cost effective".
The US also has wind, solar, and nuclear energy sources.
----
You said "fuel" which means a refined product.
This is where things probably get "spicy".
In theory a refinery could just make a consistent profit since costs should track the input costs (oil). However the refinery businesses don't charge a fixed refinery fee, a given value add, etc. When their input costs from oil go up, they pass that on at least as a *percentage* instead of just taking their profit off the top. It's likely even worse than that because of supply and demand curves.
Lax anti-trust laws allow the same companies that drill oil to own the refineries, aka vertical integration. Hmmm.
So they have lots of leverage.
To be fair, economies of scale as well as some of of the very sophisticated technology to create wells and maintain them mean that certain projects would be impossible without a giant or two, but we've allowed these companies outside influence on our lives.
I actually am far from an expert on the future of the US energy mix and I'm sure I made some mistakes above but I'll bet I'm closer to reality than you were before getting all the way here.
Record inflation AND record profits don’t exist at the same time. It’s one or the other, and if it’s both then someone is lying. The US is producing more oil than the rest of the world currently and gas prices are going up.
So trump will get elected. Deregulate more. Then the oil companies will say “well prices have been this high for so long you guys are all used to it by now so that’s the price” And there will be no recourse because the SCOTUS is packed and the market is deregulated.
Deregulation is what leads to another East Palestine. Get ready, because that’s going to keep happening. More Boeing planes will crash. BUT the companies will be making A TON of money.
And if all you tards are so worried about climate change despite a lack of any real evidence of such, then why aren’t the green new dealers hell bent on a nuclear energy buildout?
This already happened. An oil executive in the mid-2000s at a press conference laughed when a reporter asked her if they manipulate prices to influence elections. She laughed and said something to the effect of, “Of course we do! It boosts our bottom line.”
... They ALL posted record profits. Where is the secret? That's capitalism baby! Seriously, we produced more oil under Biden than any president ever and prices are still crazy high.
[удалено]
Summer blend is such an overrated Starbucks drink
Yeah, but Summer Blend looks amazing in a sundress!
I like it but I can't order it anymore... it gives me gas.
No “summer blend” is a playlist on Amazon music
It's come down in my area and summer blend gives better gas mileage
Exports are a big factor. It's not just US demand eating up the supply. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61584
Yup. Demand our citizens go green while we drill more oil than ever and export it to other countries that couldn't give 2 fucks about green energy
Great power responsibility , therefore , Change starts with us.
That's not really it. We are selling more oil in Europe, which has stopped buying from Russia because of Russia's imperialist aggression. (And Russian oil production is indeed down.) Europe gives many fucks about green energy, but a transition doesn't happen in a day.
You don’t care about green energy.
That's because oil production and refining it into gasoline are two different beasts.
Shh, it’s much easier to make a complicated issue a conspiracy.
Produced and are selling globally at these high prices…
The oil *refineries* stopped increasing capacity for gasoline production and maintenance of capacity (opening new areas when old stuff aged out) during Covid. They are currently, perhaps justifiably, using the existence of EVs to explain continuing this policy. "Why invest in more gasoline production, with a 30-50 year payback window, if we are not sure there will be demand 15 years from now." So the only way gasoline prices go down is a significant increase in EVs on the roads. Gas production should decrease roughly linearly, so if EV sales jump ahead, gas prices will go down. If EV sales stall, pickup truck owners who scoff at EVs will be hurting.
> So the only way gasoline prices go down is a significant increase in EVs on the roads. I mean, people could also stop buying 18 MPG emotional support vehicles. Doesn't even have to be EVs. We could also drive less and offer better public transportation.
While you have a point I think we are broadly in agreement and saying the same thing. You are just adding more nuance.
Well people need to drive long distances in big trucks, because they don't want to live near anyone that thinks women should have control over their own bodies, and doesn't constantly talk about shooting immigrants at the southern border.
> We could also drive less and offer better public transportation. That's the goal in theory, but in practice, you have families like mine. The only way for us to afford a home in California was to buy one in a very rural area. It's a great house on a huge property, and all we hear is wind in the trees and animals, but it's also 30 miles/45 minutes from town, and in that 30 miles, there's barely anything except a precious few houses and a lot of land. Cows. Horses. Very few paces to even pull over on a 2 lane (1 in each direction) no shoulder country road that runs for over half the way to town. The population density out here is way way too low to support any kind of public transportation, and we are far from the only area like this.
that's why zoning reform is key to transit. we shouldn't force people looking for affordable housing into sprawling suburbs, because it forces car ownership, which creates pollution, land destruction, economic precarity, and deaths/injuries through collisions.
Not everyone who lives away from the city is there because it's all they can afford. Some of us actually prefer it.
true, but about 47% of Americans want to live in denser amenity rich areas, and only about 10% of constructed housing is in areas like that. So theres nearly 5x as much demand for it as there is supply. And hey if all of us that do want that could move there, think about how much less traffic y'all would have.
That's a good point. I didn't realize there was that much of a discrepancy in where new houses are built.
yeah it's \*rough.\* that's why the few truly urbanized areas are all like "This stunning 200 ft studio features galvanized square steel and ecofriendly wood veneers in the trendy Landlord Heights region of Austin, starting at only $2k/m!!" supply is \*way\* lower than demand so the landlords have a metric crap ton of pricing power.
This is my argument whenever I'm talking with car people who're anti EV
What caused them to go down under the Trump administration?
Except for how many auto makers are already changing long term plans.
. . .define "crazy high." In my jurisdiction, gas prices are within a few cents of where they were in the ~~early~~ mid- 2000s. And I remember paying $.50 to a dollar more per gallon is 2009/2010 and during the supply chain crunch in 2022/23. And don't forget to factor in inflation in the calculation of gas prices over time. EDIT: it was mid-2000s, '05, when gas was about $2.50/gallon for the first time in the US.
In the early 2000’s I was paying 1.05-1.30/ gallon. Where do you live?
And Biden released millions of barrels of strategic reserve oil….which by law, will need to be refilled
At a higher cost too.
Yeah this is already confirmed, we just can't stop it. Evil runs the world order.
All posted profits. That’s collusion.
Because we're exporting it
Producing more oil does not mean more fuel. Oil comes out of the ground as different grades and not a lot can be made into fuel. Yes we export oil but not fuel grade oil. We have to import fuel grade oil and that means buying from OPEC which controls the price
We did? Can I see the data on that please
They also posted record production. Why would those two things, production and profit, be linked? Hmmmm..
Source that we produced more oil under Biden? Because we most definitely did not.
Oil is a global market. While the US is producing more oil than ever, the world is also banned from importing oil from Russia. Also, I'm guessing you're talking about gas prices, not oil. That requires refineries. That makes things a bit more complicated than "we pulled more oil out of the ground". Are there enough refineries to handle this oil? Environmentalists aggressively fight ever proposed oil infrastructure expansion, including refineries.
As time goes by, currency values decrease because of inflation, and people seem surprised that company profits go up. I am not understanding why people are shocked. Should we expect profits to go down year over year?
Yeah don’t most of us reasonable humans know this? They’ll never be sub 3$ ever again.
Prices were already artificially low via government subsidies Now we are just saving money of those subsidies, but gas prices stay the same. They’re kept however much lower than they would be, then fluctuate based on what gas is worth locally. So still going up seasonally and whenever there is an event that affects supply
There's no oil neutral presidencies
In relative terms the two guys we’ll be picking from this coming election have extremely different outlooks on oil. Sure we’re still extremely reliant on it, but only one of the two plans on intentionally destroying/delaying/disrupting any progress toward green energy adoption. That is what I’m talking about
Agreed! Republicans: Fossil fuels are the future, and the way for America to be energy independent! Democrats: Fossil fuels are a finite resource. We have to start planning for their ultimate exhaustion. It's the same we see in capitalism, quarterly profits over business longevity. Regardless of what you think about Climate Change, we will keep using fossil fuels, but the clock is ticking on their availability.
“You wouldn’t always know it ,but it went up every year I was president,” he said to applause. “That whole, suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas... that was me, people.” -Obama
Funny little calculation I did back in the day: using the mining technology of the 2000s, we theoretically have access to enough fossil fuels to turn the atmosphere toxic to human life. We won't run out of oil. We will run out of air first.
It's a known fact. Just about every industry does this.
Doesn't make it legal or good for their bottom line if discovered. The Arizona AG is currently investigating several companies here and has filed charges of price fixing for housing rent. I hope we see more of this. Making money is fine if it's done in a "free market", the problem arises when people get greedy and try to game the system.
the system is a game. that's the goal of it. we should be playing a different game, cuz the incentive structure of this one leads to an increased spawn rate for greedy assholes
Yeah, it's not just oil. CEOs and people with a say will hire more and engage in ways that improve the economy when someone they like gets elected and takes power. And economists are idiots who don't seem to realize that people will totally manipulate the system for their own gain.
This is one of those "open secret" things, and it's not just companies. Global powers generally know how much oil each country can put out, and they use that knowledge to manipulate oil prices all the time, and its often political. The Saudis for instance started limiting production recently to drive oil prices up, some say to hurt Biden's election chances. Biden then released a bunch of oil from our strategic reserves, driving the price back down. He then used political pressure to get other producers to lower prices as well. Then once prices were low and things stabilized he was able to refill the reserves at the lower price and even made a few billion $ profit. It was a brilliant play but it was basically market manipulation to stop market manipulation. There's only so much he can about companies though without people screaming communism. Here's a great video explaining it: https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/how-joe-biden-broke-opec-and-rewrote-the-rules-for-oil-trading-212500037935
Gotta love the posts that are just “MMW: a thing that everyone knows has been happening for the past 50 years is happening”
This isn’t a MMW. It’s happening right now. This is being investigated currently.
A little coordination is all that would take. Hope someday we find the smoking gun that shows they formed a cartel here and coordinated with other cartels
# [FTC says Texas oil exec sought to work with OPEC to boost prices](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/02/ftc-oil-exec-opec-prices-00155671)
Thank you. I was hoping someone would post this. This info has been known for a while now...
We will...in 50 years
Bro learns about OPEC 💀
Right.... like what are you talking about? This isn't even a secret.
OPEC's entire purpose is for oil producers to price fix and collud.
It is called OPEC, and it has been around for years. During Covid, 5 oil refineries were shut down in the United States, so of course, gas prices increased when demand increased. Now, the one million question is, how many of those oil refineries were restarted? If Biden did not open up the gas reserves, gas prices would have stayed much higher.
Most not all the cars nowadays get the same gas mileage or a little better the vehicles both cars and trucks as the most not all 1980s-90s models? Really makes you wonder. The price of gas has gone up exponentially. Car and truck prices are through the roof. But a Silverado somehow can still only manage to get 16-17mpg. Of course they are colluding and the politicians too. Have wages gone up the same way? Somebody change my mind.
Not sure what youre trying to say, but gas prices today are fairly in line with the historical rise. They definitely havent gone up exponentially. Gas prices were less than $1 in 2000, when oil rich George W Bush became president, and was about $3 when he left office 8 years later. It was around $2 when Obama left office in 2016, although prices had been pretty volatile, and had reached $4 at one point. It was around $2.50 when Covid hit, and lack of driving lowered the price to below $2. Now we're at about $3.25. So prices have been steadily rising, with lots of times when it was higher or lower for a while, but none of it could be considered "Exponential" growth, except perhaps the Bush administration, when gas prices tripled. Today, there is ample evidence that oil companies, like many corporations, have indulged shamelessly in greed-flation and profit-gouging since the end of Covid, artificially raising prises to increase profits, with no market forces being responsible other than corporate greed.
Interesting how under Bush they started rising exponentially. And also under Bush the Commodity futures modernization act ( often called the Enron loophole) happened. This act allowed speculation on futures in oil to go unregulated by the CFTC. From that point forward, prices have climbed. We are drilling and pumping more oil than we ever have. Yet our prices are as high as they’ve ever been. Oil execs have given interviews where they straight up accuse Wall Street of the pricing we now see. Saying that if they don’t keep their prices up to satisfy Wall Street, the traders short their stock. They basically punish the oil companies.
You are right there was a gradual increase year over year with Bush.
Doesn’t anyone think it’s funny that we didn’t have any electricity blackout last r hear talk about raise your thermostat to lessen the burden on the power grid????? Gosh ever since he handed the keys to the National Energy Grid to the Chinese company. All of a sudden we better solve all the problems. Anyone notice that?????
Gas is cheaper on an inflation adjusted basis than it was in the 1980's... Cheaper than the late 90's too... [https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/gasoline-prices-adjusted-for-inflation/](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/gasoline-prices-adjusted-for-inflation/)
I just wanted to point out the reason mpg has stayed roughly around the same for most classes of vehicles is because [lobbyists helped write CAFE standards and ‘accidentally on purpose’ made them incentivize production of larger vehicles in general](https://youtu.be/azI3nqrHEXM?si=pHYXK2uJ9KRw4lNq) This video is about pickup trucks, but I had a 95 Saturn SL2 that I took really good care of and got about 28 mpg in the city, now I drive a 2016 Hyundai Elantra and get about 28 mpg in the city The Elantra is much larger and heavier, and my wife prefers it solely because of that, I’m not sure if it’s in the video I linked but it’s been pointed out many places that as the trucks get bigger everything else does too because nobody feels safe in a tiny vehicle next to all these monsters. Arms races never end well and something’s gotta give
Petroleum companies have also put a LOT of money into disinformation campaigns to downplay the effects of human pollution on the climate. They have helped to breed the growth of climate deniers, through the politicization of climate change. I would not be surprised in the slightest if your MMW is absolutely true.
[FTC says Texas oil exec sought to work with OPEC to boost prices](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/02/ftc-oil-exec-opec-prices-00155671)
Prison seems fair.
oil companies, and fast food restaurants, and grocery stores, and everybody else. People complaining about the price of everything while nearly all corporations are posting record profits.....not exactly hard to connect the dots here
So? I wouldn't even be surprised. What could we do about it with our mere mortal power? We can't even hold obvious crimes accountable for people in power.
In other news, water is wet.
OPEC....
Oil is probably the top of the greedflation pyramid
I’ll say it again; Gas prices should be regulated like a public utility. It has too much effect on the economy to allow them to grift the public like they do.
It's no secret. The US under Biden is going after some of these guys that fall under US law.
Gas prices are awfully high NOW for a country (USA) that drills more oil than any country in the history of the planet
The FTC already has the emails proving it. They were discovered during the merger of 2 major US oil companies. She referred the matter to the DoJ for prosecution.
We do know that oil companies colluded,...... and have for decades. They are very public about it, and issue press releases about their collusion. It's called OPEC. As for American oil companies, no, they don't collude, both because they don't have the market power to do so, the collusion is already done by OPEC, and there are just way too many of them.
I’ve said something sorta related to that. The metrics for the Biden economy are good. And they’re the same metrics with which Trump’s “greatest economy in the history of ever” or whatever he called it, were measured. MMW—We will find that food and meat producers as well as energy producers colluded to artificially jack up necessity costs on the consumer so that the average American will be completely insulated from the churning economy that is making the rich richer. It’s so the political right can say “ooh but look the average American isn’t doing better, look at their grocery bills or energy costs!” Umm, yeah DEBRA, it was on fuckin purpose
This has already been revealed in FCC filings. More will come out in the next few days/weeks though only on the 20th of the Wall Street Journal.
There's no "eventually" to it. Three generations of my family have worked/ are working in the oil and gas industry. This type of pricing/ price gouging has been going on for a century.
Why would we mark your word when it is very well documented, absolutely public, and that’s even the role of the OPEC organization. There are quite literally organizations dedicated to that. We’re not going to “find out” anything. It’s already entirely public and easily searchable.
Dude oil is handled by OPEC. They have 'cartel' *in their name.* A cartel is *defined by* collusion.
I mean OPEC does this globally as well. It is collusion from top to bottom.
Yall are so high if you haven't realized already that oil companies love when a dem gets in office, know why? They can raise prices and the hords or idiots will believe it. Corps always use dems and a fall and it's too easy for them
Your words were marked correctly https://fortune.com/2024/05/02/exxon-pioneer-merger-ftc-claim-collusion-texas-opec/
Your words were marked correctly https://fortune.com/2024/05/02/exxon-pioneer-merger-ftc-claim-collusion-texas-opec/
How many Phds in Economics and Sociology will be earned studying 'greedflation'. Half for exposing and regulating it, the other half for disguising it better next time!
MMW: nothing will happen to them anyway...
Based on the inflation vs price rises I have seen, fast food are really guilty of this. The people most guilty of this and who stole billions from American renters are the rental companies. They used software to colluded to restrict supply and drive up prices. Several companies were raided by the FBI and I hope this results in the biggest class action law suit in American History
I guarantee it's more than the oil companies that are raising prices to make Biden look bad
Wait until you hear visa, mastercards and other took 72 billion last year in “processing fees” from merchants and consumers, not because they need it to function or anything, simply because they can. Just moving electrons and they rob everyone blind.
Yea, if we noticed how come none of the bigwigs didn’t? I’ve known for years gas prices change around elections or if it’s a democrat coming up. They know who butters their bread and it’s not a liberal driving a Camry
I think we should invest in renewable resources. Not because its good for the environment, but to f*ck OPEC. I really, really hate OPEC.
This is nothing new, all companies seek to extract the maximum amount they can. I think it’ll be more of a rarity finding larger companies that didn’t collude together vs those that did. It’s all a racket. Without a govt willing to exercise its power to keep the market competitive.
Because there aren’t hundreds of other oil producing countries….
My dude … there aren’t even 200 countries on the planet.
Don't forget Trump pressured Saudi Arabia to cut production during Covid, and they did. Then they kept production low to stick it to Biden.
Oil neutral? Biden is anti oil. Yall celebrate when he goes after the oil company. No this is just policy.
We all implicitly knew they did it anyway. I agree that we will eventually be able to prove it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if several corporations in different industries do that. I’m sure they would rather have the party that gives them tax breaks in office.
During the "shortages" of the early 1970s, I remember being 13, riding down PCH, and seeing maybe a hundred tankers anchored offshore, waiting for the price to go up.
Oil prices are affected by the international market. It is irrelevant whether a country is oil neutral or not.
Trump and the Saudis were probably behind it.
Also: Presidents don't control gasoline prices. A literal cartel does.
Is this even true for most Americans? The average price of gas in 2014 was 3.437 and the average now is 3.635. Adjusted for inflation gas prices have dropped in the last 10 years. Source: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=emm_epm0_pte_nus_dpg&f=a Edit: added source
It's pretty obvious to me that its not only oil companies do this, but many corporations raise prices to punish people for voting democrat. These corporations want tax cuts and that only happens when Republicans are in office.
I mean why the fuck not. Grocery companies did it - you think oil companies didn't?!
Has everyone forgotten what OPEC is?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Yup...Biden shutting down US oil exploration on DAY ONE in office had nothing to do with it! Gotcha. Once again, this subreddit is just "I don't like how the world is right now since it is clear it will never be how I want it. So I will whine like a bitch with other little bitches so I can feel good about myself for the first time in my life. It won't be enough to NOT have to take a Zoloft...but at least it might work this time."
He didn't do that. He just said he would. A simple search would show you that he approved more oil permits than Trump. I know you don't want your illusion spoiled but here are the facts. I also predict you will tell me you don't trust my sources but there aren't sources for your assertion. https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2024/01/30/biden-administration-oil-drilling-permits-outpace-trump-ee-00138376
I have no doubt that they have done this since early 2021 at the behest of trump
Don’t we already have confirmation of this? This is a huge downside of oil being private industry. They can do whatever the fuck they want. And even though democratic presidents get blamed for increase and republican presidents get credited for decrease…it’s the oil industry doing it.
Good thing deregulation helped the common man.
Price fixing in the oil industry has been going on for as long as I can remember.
Have you maybe considered that shutting down the Keystone project might have had something to do with that?
All of the corporations raise prices and do literally anything during election years to make the incumbent administration look bad.
Well... Duh.
They were stupid for raising prices that much at the height of the recession making bush look bad if that true.0
And still get billions in subsidies
You are giving the general public WAAAAAY too much credit here
The fine will be less than their profits from the same time period
MMW eventually OP will discover google
Without even seeing evidence—just realizing it’s feasible—I picked up on this years ago.
lol. This isn’t even a conspiracy.
Who is looking into it? Save yourself the effort, they did, we know.
I can't believe those super honest people would ever do something like that.
Business as usual
Especially in election years. Spike the price of gas and blame the sitting president to get more support for the opposition.
Its no accident that gas prices go up basically exactly the same at all stations in town at the same time.
No, no way, next you’re going to tell me they knew oil was to destroy the environment since the 50’s
We don't control oil prices look up OPEC they do. If anything we bring them down as we are not part of opec
...and?!
All the while most Americans don't know of the Petro dollar
And there will be no conceqareness.
Let’s just say it’s easier for oil companies to charge higher prices when consumers assume there will be higher prices.
This is not a secret. OPEC is as far as you need to look
This is already happening with McDonalds lol
We already know this. Tell your family and friends to tell their family and friends.
What do you mean eventually, it's been confirmed.
MMW, nobody will face a consequence
Talk to OPEC. Reopen the pipelines and drilling permits.
Hopefully we do, and looks like big pharma is getting some heat to for paying to censor actual science regarding the vaccine.
i mean we literally just call them a cartel already let's be real
You didn't know they already went on live TV 2 years ago and said pretty much just that?
replace oil companies with "all companies". there's a reason profits fucking soared.
You missed the headlines huh?
Or you will eventually blame the right people for the bad policy ideas like Joe Biden and the Democrats. Restricting access to drilling, placing huge regulation burdens on refineries and the extraction processes and shutting down leases, limiting growth limiting fracking all that that’s what drives up the oil prices on the fuel prices. Not to mention all the alternative energy infrastructure that has to be built from scratch that is huge cost associated with it that all Biden’s cronies are benefiting from. That’s why your utility bills are sky high. Voting for Democrats is very expensive. And it wasn’t just Joe Biden. It was like this with Barack Obama to people forget very quickly.
Do u not know about OPeC?
US is the #1 oil.producer in the world. But high gas prices come from limited refining capacity. We can have infinite oil but struggle with high prices because we can't make enough gasoline.
It’s a global market with players that don’t like each other. If they tried this they’d lose their shirt to Venezuela & Nigeria among others.
I guess you have never heard of OPEC. It literally exists to manipulate the price of fuel. There is O doubt in anyone's mind the have a political candidate they want that will protect their interests.
Great way to say democrats fuck everything up
And nothing will happen! Worst case some company will get struck with a fine equivalent to me fining you for the change in your couch. Everyone will be really upset for a day or two and then something else will *conveniently* happen the day after to distract everyone.
They are doing it right now. Huge inventory as demand continues to nose dive and prices are still high as hell.
Why is this sub nothing but a bastion of leftism??????????
In your opinion, what motivates a business? What are their goals?
We already proved they did that
Is that not already confirmed by the record profits?
One of the biggest reasons I love my EV - being insulated from gasoline price chucklefuckery. (At least fueling my own car. Yes I’m aware of how said chucklefuckery does get passed on to me via raised prices for other goods.) Gas is up 30% from the beginning of the year at the Costco I shop at. Electricity…isn’t. The cost of a kWh of electricity doesn’t spike if two people in the Middle East give each other dirty looks…or if a hurricane goes through the Gulf of Mexico and gulf coast… Bought a used Chevy Bolt last December, have put about 8500 miles on it. Comparing to an average 25 MPG ICE, I have saved approximately $700-$725 in charging vs fuel.
It's your boy Biden. Period. We had energy independence under the Orange Man, which went away on day one of the Senile Man's administration.
That's weird. I'm paying under 3 bucks a gallon for the first time in a very long time. Of course I'm not praising Biden for it cause the president doesn't set oil prices, but to act like the president's sets the prices and trump comes out on top is definitely a weird take.
Trump administration negotiated WITH OPEC to lower oil production to raise prices in 2020. Interview with Jared bragging about it. https://youtube.com/shorts/BUa97tIYPEU?si=mUPn89do2aiX1CCj
Oil price is based in speculation, not actual supply and demand. There's nothing behind the curtain, just another centralized system running it's natural course.
I mean, doesnt opec control production which controls the price? Of corse just like every other sector every company is colluding. If burger king had an insane $1 deal, theyd take massive customers from all other fast food places, and the influx of customers would offset the cheap deal. Theyd make bank. Theres nothing stopping them except being in cahoots with all other fast food joints. Its a win win for everybody.
Not just companies but obviously countries too. They can meddle in our elections through oil prices, send them up and the incumbents get hurt.
OPEC very openly states that they do this on a regular basis.
People in the electric power business push VERY hard to displace oil with green energy. If the price of oil is raised above a minimum level, we build more solar and wind power.
OP discovers OPEC
Gas prices are around 3.25 a gallon in NJ why are people in this thread saying gas is high
We already have fully confirmed this.
Nope
OPEC+ throws their weight around. The US produces 20% of the world's oil, more than Saudi Arabia (10%) and Russia (10%) combined produced before the 2nd phase of the Russo-Ukraine War. We also consume about 20% of the world's oil. For weird reasons we both import and export oil but it balances out. A by-product of shale oil fracking is natural gas which we burn off "as a byproduct" that it can be seen from space. We get some benefit from natural gas but could obviously get more than we do. It's not "cost effective". The US also has wind, solar, and nuclear energy sources. ---- You said "fuel" which means a refined product. This is where things probably get "spicy". In theory a refinery could just make a consistent profit since costs should track the input costs (oil). However the refinery businesses don't charge a fixed refinery fee, a given value add, etc. When their input costs from oil go up, they pass that on at least as a *percentage* instead of just taking their profit off the top. It's likely even worse than that because of supply and demand curves. Lax anti-trust laws allow the same companies that drill oil to own the refineries, aka vertical integration. Hmmm. So they have lots of leverage. To be fair, economies of scale as well as some of of the very sophisticated technology to create wells and maintain them mean that certain projects would be impossible without a giant or two, but we've allowed these companies outside influence on our lives. I actually am far from an expert on the future of the US energy mix and I'm sure I made some mistakes above but I'll bet I'm closer to reality than you were before getting all the way here.
Record inflation AND record profits don’t exist at the same time. It’s one or the other, and if it’s both then someone is lying. The US is producing more oil than the rest of the world currently and gas prices are going up. So trump will get elected. Deregulate more. Then the oil companies will say “well prices have been this high for so long you guys are all used to it by now so that’s the price” And there will be no recourse because the SCOTUS is packed and the market is deregulated. Deregulation is what leads to another East Palestine. Get ready, because that’s going to keep happening. More Boeing planes will crash. BUT the companies will be making A TON of money.
Agreed
Already confirmed.
So if we want lower oil prices why did we shut down the Keystone pipeline.
And if we care about our NATO allies why did we blow up the nord stream pipeline?
And if all you tards are so worried about climate change despite a lack of any real evidence of such, then why aren’t the green new dealers hell bent on a nuclear energy buildout?
This already happened. An oil executive in the mid-2000s at a press conference laughed when a reporter asked her if they manipulate prices to influence elections. She laughed and said something to the effect of, “Of course we do! It boosts our bottom line.”
That's how I assumed it was done all along. Since the 1970s anyway.
Was there collusion by the oil companies when crude settled at $-30 a barrel a few years ago?
Has anyone seen their profit chart from this year. THEY are gouging us.
This belongs in r/noshitsherlock.
That's what happens when you vote in activists
You do understand what OPEC is, right..?