The recent rise in gasoline prices is not the President’s fault. It would not even be the President’s fault if Trump were still President. In fact, prices started to rise in January before Trump left office, and the overall problem of U.S. vulnerability to gas price volatility has been brewing for over 30 years.
In early January 2021 Russia and the OPEC cartel finally decided to stop flooding the world market with cheap oil in an effort to hurt Canadian oil sands, U.S. shale oil, and Venezuelan deep water production (which are more expensive extraction methods), and cut back their own supplies to the world market. Prices rose accordingly. In February, major refineries were shut down and/or damaged by the freezing cold and power outages in Texas. That also diminished available gas supplies. Now, the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions are easing and people are itching to travel again, all while we go into the normal summer travel season where prices always rise because gasoline demand rises.
The sudden shortages of gasoline and $4 per gallon prices in the southeastern United States were caused by the Colonial Pipeline cyber security hack issue. The outright gas station outages were caused by gas hoarding. Prices reacted worst where the hoarding happened, and in those locations people brought $7 per gallon gasoline prices upon themselves.
Gas was $1.20 per gallon in 1980. It is crazy unrealistic to think that it should always be less than $3 per gallon in 2021 when most everything else has increased at the normal or above rate of inflation. That prices have been so low for so long is a function of the recent world oil glut as technology has allowed more countries to become oil producers, combined with the heavy fossil fuel subsidies that have been part of US energy policy for a century. Depending on what is counted as a subsidy, estimates are that U.S. oil subsidies depress average U.S. gasoline prices between 28 cents and 98 cents per gallon.
The real issues here are that:
1) The U.S. does not emphasize cyber security enough for vital industries, and
2) We Americans have been so spoiled for 30 years with overly cheap gas prices and gas guzzling vehicles that when prices spike to more realistic 2021 levels many can no longer afford to drive them.
The truth is that we have had this coming for quite a while.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/05/investing/opec-oil-production-russia-saudi/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/12/politics/colonial-pipeline-ransomware-payment/index.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/colonial-pipeline-cyberattack-hack-11620668583
