Nutter's Washington

Desparate Biden Taps Strategic Petroleum Reserve

President Biden--Mr. Climate Change-- has ordered in an act of total political desperation, 50 million barrels of oil be released from America’s strategic reserve to help bring down energy costs. Since he can not get the OPEC nations to increase their production after humiliating begging them, he has decided to tap our own domestic supplies in storage in a futile effort to reduce gasoline prices.

Whoa, wait a minute, I thought fossil fuels were verboten and inflation was a temporary problem.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is an emergency stockpile to preserve access to oil in case of natural disasters, national security issues and other extraordinary events. The SPR was created in 1975 as a hedge against the “Energy Crisis” created by the Arab Boycott. The reserves are stored in caverns created in salt domes in Texas and Louisiana, about 600 million barrels.

The Biden administration has argued the reserve is the right tool to help ease the supply problem. However, the amount will not have a significant effect on supply, or any meaningful effect on prices. America uses an average of 20 plus million barrels a day, so the release is about two-and-a-half days of additional supply. Yawn.

Mr. Biden has done everything possible with more to come to discourage domestic oil and gas production. Now, he wants to use the SPR to influence the market and show he is doing something about inflation, a purpose for which it was never intended. Pathetic political gimmickry.

Inflation: Clueless in Washington hiding in basement.

In case you have been hiding in the Presidents’ basement, you may not know the Consumer Price Index rose 6.2 percent in October from a year ago, the fastest pace in more than thirty years. Prices are up everywhere. Been to the grocery store lately? Gassed up the fossil fuel powered car?  Paid the utility bill? How could this be as the Government said this was and is temporary and is not an issue or concern. What is not surprising is the President is clueless. He continues to insist the Congress pour more money into the economy. The Better Watch Out Bill of who knows how many trillions of dollars would continue to inflame the coming inflation inferno. Seems like the President went to the Jimmy Carter School of Economics. He will do and say anything and distort the reality to get his program enacted.

The President- the climate savior- fusses about the high price of gasoline but has done about everything possible to suppress domestic production-eliminate federal leasing, stop pipeline construction, trying to restrict capital markets from financing fossil fuel projects and on and on. At the same time, he has begged OPEC nations time and time again to increase their production to drive down prices. How demeaning. Am I missing something here?

This Administration has tried to elevate wages, which of course will be reflected in prices later on. What they have missed is that real wages have actually gone down. So a person can make more nominal dollars but can actually buy less. Duh. It is just going to get worse.