Are engaging in armchair QBing of a situation that is basically unprecedented. US oil production isn’t declining, it’s increasing. But nobody in the world saw the intensity of the demand surge or of the supply chain bottlenecks.

And obviously, we understand that there is a push to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. So basically we have an unprecedented supply/demand mismatch, due to demand surging out of a pandemic and supply chain snarls delaying increases in supply from getting to market- push/pull inflation. That’s the near term problem. The long term problem is to reduce reliance on oil and gas. There is clearly a paradox between addressing the near term and long term problems. Which all governments are facing and is really not a problem any of them made.

I get we want to bitch and moan and scapegoat - you see it in this thread with the Biden admin or the media, depending on the poster, and others go after OPEC. I don’t know which Biden policy you think is causing this problem. The climate change stuff in Build Back Better is still tied up in the senate, so it ain’t that. Please don’t say “Keystone!” because it ain’t that. The infrastructure law hasn’t taken effect yet, and should really only help on the supply side. I agree that the stimulus at the start of the Biden admin was too much, too late, and is profoundly unhelpful in a first-in-decades inflationary spike.

I think the benefits of this are going to be marginal at best; I also think there are not many risks in it and a little cooperation with allies and competitors alike is a positive thing (and any president would be doing it); and I think no government policy(ies) can be isolated as causing these problems.
[Post edited by hoolstoptheheels at 11/24/2021 09:38AM]