GAS PRICES

The government can’t guarantee access to a NORMAL education either.

We’d rather have a democratically elected government than one ruled by little orange men.

With the exception of a relatively smalll (35K b/d) refinery west-Texas refinery built in 2019, there hasn’t been a major new refinery built in the U.S. in nearly 50 years spanning both Democratic and Republican administrations. Existing refineries are running near 100 percent capacity so even if we had additional crude imports, they couldn’t be processed in the near term. The combination of a post-covid surge in demand and the loss of Russian distilled product are the primary cause of recent price spikes and it has little to do with Biden. In the longer term, however, when demand levels return to normal and Russian product is back on the market, Biden’s policies could keep prices at above market levels since his “excess profit” rhetoric and constraints on new pipelines will limit incentives for expanding U.S. refining capacity. Refiners don’t want to invest in new capacity unless they are assured of reasonable returns and those assurances are sorely lacking.

a m Condensate splitters are distillation units that process condensate, which is lighter than crude oil. Splitter capacity is included as atmospheric distillation units in U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data.

However, the newest refinery with significant downstream unit capacity is Marathon’s facility in Garyville, Louisiana. That facility came online in 1977 with an initial atmospheric distillation unit capacity of 200,000 b/cd, and as of January 1, 2021, it had a capacity of 578,000 b/cd.

@Jackk, how about letting fracking work and reopening Keystone, bith were killed by Brandon

The gas companies already have enough land to frack on, if they wanted. They don’t want to. They are all enjoying the billion dollar profits that they are currently making while the America consumer suffers.
Finishing building the Keystone XL phase 4 pipeline is a republican fairy tale that it would significantly lower gas prices.

Dear Common,

Keystones is both a pipedream and a punchline. The government should spend trillions building a infrastructure to freight oil across the country from a place it may or may not be extracted to a place that it may or may not be refined. Also, the infrastructure should than be privatized, and those private companies should not be obligated to use it.

If you like the idea of massive government projects with no accountability, than in keystone. Otherwise, just lower taxes on gasoline.

Fracking is no longer a partisan issue. It’s all tied up in the Courts. The oil industry knew it was a legal gamble to not apply long standing legal norms to new methods of drilling. Now they have a bunch of useless infrastructure. But their happy. The public already paid for it twice.

@n0m, your ignorance is showing, the goverment never spent a dime on it, its a private enterpries owner by TC Corp with minor equity stakes by Conoco and Valero

Even if construction of the Keystone pipeline was allowed to continue it wouldn’t effect today’s gas price as it would not be functioning yet.
Oil companies set the prices for gas and they have had record profits. They could cut the price by 10% and still be profitable.

America has lots and lots of oil enough to be pretty much self reliant and be able to set prices.

The reason we are not is because gas companies are always afraid the dems will shut them down. It is not worth it for them to invest the huge sums when one day a dem president will say we have to go green and we can’t drill our own oil.
Instead of us drilling in the most green way possible, we are allowing the Arab countries to get rich and they don’t care about green and safety. American companies can’t lower prices because they are in a very risky business, when dems are in power. If there was a Republican in power, they would be receiving incentives to produce more (instead of the rhetoric Biden seems to love) which would cause lower prices.
Under Biden, taxes for these companies are higher, there are more regulations- and then Biden gives all his nice speeches that they are making too much profit and that they have to drill more oil. Biden loves blaming the American oil companies for their high prices, yet he is tying their hands behind their back. Even if he lowers regulations (which I believe he did) the oil companies don’t trust him not to put them right back.

Obama stopped Keystone 10 years ago. If he hadn’t it would have been online today.

Oil companies are neither public utilities subject to cost of service regulation nor charitable organizations focused on public welfare. They function in a global market where prices for crude are set largely by OPEC production decisions and distillate products by refining capacity and short-term demand. We don’t tell sellers of $300 esrogim from Italy to “be patriotic” and sell their products for $50 so the poishete yid can be mehader mitzvah like his affluent brehthren. Their current prices aren’t even the highest (in real terms) relative to prior supply disruptions. Biden’s stupid comment to “be patriotic” and cut prices is indicative of the political and market economics naivete on BOTH sides of the debate.

TRT,
The gas companies love that video. They love it to the bank.
They can raise prices up and up and up, and the republicans will continue to blame Biden.

Dear Common,

What proverbial sands are you referring to?

The government spent two billion in the 2010s and was posed to “lend” over five billion last year. I don’t know what happened to that money now that Biden canceled the cross-border permit.

Dear Amom,

I’ll make it even simpler. It’s more profitable for companies to sit back and say they will produce, than actually producing a product and selling it. It sounds ridiculous for the oil industry to say that it is hard for them to sell their oil, so they blame government regulations. Which is true. But after fifty years, it’s about time that they come up with a business model that is profitable off of it’s own realities.

For dem defenders: Biden said that he will shut down oli industry. Now, you are saying government has no role, it is all markets. So, either he, and you, lied then, or you are lying now.

The government has a role in setting up fair markets and when it doesn’t, things go wrong.

“Brandon strifled the domestic gas production hence less supplies…”
As someone observed, the level of ignorance here is breathtaking…
The mods prefer we don’t post URL links but if you go to the DOE website (EIA.gov) and luse the dropdown menu to link to “U.S. Natural Gas production”) you will note that the monthly natural gas production when Trump left in January 2021 was 2.876 MCF…..the most recent monthly production for April 2022 was 3.187 MCF.
Conventional wisdom suggests that 3.187 is a larger volume than 2.876. The figures for May and June will be even larger since producers ramped up marginal production capacity when Russia invaded Ukraine in March 2022. As world prices spiked over the past 90 days, foreign demand made it substantially more profitable to convert U.S. production to LNG exports to Europe where it was priced at $30/MMBTU (including conversion and transport costs) compared to domestic commodity prices (Henry Hub of about $9/MMBTU).

If you are whining about gas prices your an ungreen deplorable and should worry about being cancelled. Our (assuming you are an American) democratically elected government is hard at work to save the country, the world and even the universe, from climate catastrophe which the official scientists have decided is caused by carbon emissions (only heretics point to frequent variability in climate throughout recorded history, and that it has often been warmer, and that warm periods tend to have higher standards of living due to increased food production). Our Democratic government has wisely coerced oil companies to cut back production by blocking drilling, banning new pipelines and carbon-related infrastructure, and subsidizing the worthy woke in switching to very expensive electric cars.

Dear Common,

It is much more expensive to clean sand oil. Guinea has only high sulfur diesel. They have zero refineries. It is all imported from Europe and the USA.

Any way you want to have it, the sole purpose of the Keystone Pipeline is to send Canadian oil to Europe. The parts that service our oil infrastructure is all built. Almost none of the locals want that last phase. Especially after they saw what happened in Texas and other States.

This is very enlightening threat: economy is a complicated subject and it is possible to come up with lots of technical explanations that support you – look at oil production, disregarding economy growth, etc. You may be basing your position on reading some biased sources that come up with these funny numbers. Given complexities, look at the big picture: Dems discourage oil industry in multiple ways. Thus, when prices are so high, it is partially their fault. You cam justifiably claim that it was a rational policy to, say, close all coal & gas in Germany and it “only” fell apart because of unpredictable Russians. Merkel still refuses to admit her fault, saying “at least I tried”. The answer is simple: if you put priority on possible near-term dangers, you will do all possible to mitigate possible harm. If you don’t, it is your fault. It is probably easier to see on the above German case that is being ridiculous, but situation in US is similar.

huju: You need updated lessons in energy geopolitics. Yes, American supplies of both oil and gas very much DO impact the spot pricing on the international markets. The U.S. now holds more recoverable oil reserves than Saudi Arabia and Russia. You are still steeped in the oil mindset of 10+ years ago. America, especially since fracking, has taken the markets by storm. And the more America produces (something Democrats are keen on keeping America down on), the lower international prices will be.

Time to drill in Alaska’s ANWR arctic. And build Keystone. As Republicans attempted to accomplish well over a decade ago (ANWR multiple decades ago), but faced Democrat impediments.

Biden conveniently found an excuse “Russia, Russia”, though gas prices began worsening way before Putin’s invasion.

jackk,
I think you are projecting values from individual nuts to Republicans overall. I am sure we also over-react to the Democratic nuts. And when you ask your questions in a reasonable manner, people do answer. Some are just too emotional – “deny pandemic” while ignoring unprecedented pro-active spending on vaccines is pure ungratefulness. “R- love Russia” despite decades of anti-Soviet/Russian stances by most R-s. Yes, W found soul in Putin’s eyes and T asked him for Clinton’s emails, but both administrations were populated by anti-Russia/China policy makers. “more americans dying” – while US life expectancy started decreasing first time after WW2 under Obama (except 1993). Just try to formulate a claim that does not sound ridiculous and maybe people will talk to you.