White House officials are bracing for oil prices to surge past the $150-a-barrel mark as the Iran war stretches into its second month and the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, according to a new report.
In recent weeks, the average cost of a barrel of crude has hovered around $100, a figure that the Trump administration now sees as the new “baseline,” though a potential spike to $200 hasn’t been ruled out, a source familiar with the matter told Politico.
As a result, officials have entered “all hands on deck” mode, urgently evaluating options to tame soaring oil prices — which pushed gas above $4 a gallon this week and risks inflating costs across the broader economy.
If only in the decades since the oil embargo of the early 1970s we kept investing in alternative energy sources we could have been in a much better place energy wise.
Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House roof. Reagan took them down. Pretty succinct summary of the past 40 years.
before anyone says “those solar panels didn’t work very well” THAT’S NOT THE FUCKING POINT. they represented a commitment to invest in the technology. the presidency is the bully pulpit. a person can change a lot about the direction of the country there without making meaningful change in the moment. Grant and Carter are probably the two presidents who tried the hardest to do something positive with that power
Exactly.
Grant and Carter are probably the two presidents who tried the hardest to do something positive with that power
I would say both Roosevelts did too. Admittedly, my Grant knowledge isn’t super deep, what was it that he did that you think puts him in that group?
he had this crazy idea that the treasury department should give money to poor people and that someone should kick the KKK’s ass
Let’s not idolize Carter too much. I like a lot of what he did, and I obviously love his “old man building houses for the needy” golden years, but Carter was also the beginning of the dismantling of antitrust which is the primary reason we have wealth consolidation and market capture as the de facto norm today.
He started the ball rolling with a bizarre policy of “big businesses are good for everyone” which meant antitrust laws–while still on the books and our official policy–simply stopped being enforced. Regan capitalized on this but Carter started it.
oh for sure. and Grant wasn’t great for indioenous people. America has never had a good president. just a limited selection who qualify for “most least worst”
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Yeah, but windmills cause cancer and solar is basically gay. And EVs - I’m pretty sure if you drive those when you are male, your penis shrivels up, falls off and you grow a vagina.
your penis shrivels up, falls off and you grow a vagina.
Sarcasm: That’s anti-profit! The shareholder nobility will starve!
Oh hey, maybe if they didn’t dismantle all the green energy and EV initiatives then the impacts would be mitigated a little bit…
Funny how that works…
Literally couldn’t be doing anything different to help Russia more.
That’s gotta be the point, isn’t it? It’s not really a secret that trump’s a russian stooge…
I think about this. Functionally he’s a puppet of Putin, but I don’t think that it’s an “active” stooging. Trump wants to BE a dictator and Putin is very intelligent, so he’s able to ply Trump to his will. Trump probably cares more about the pee-tapes than it’d actually affect him.
“P-tapes”
It’s been pedo tapes the whole time.
Just as they planned.
Automakers have billions of dollars in brand new EV manufacturing equipment and lines sitting around doing nothing since the new administration changed all the regulations and incentives.
they’re also putting some new programs on hold, so at least they’re not all outright cancelled yet
but oh boy have a lot been cancelled. we built a huge cell that was shipped to the customer and scrapped the next year. the customer actually ended up taking apart the tools we built and shipping us back a bunch of the components to build them another cell for a different project. that was neat.
And they arrested/deported most of the engineers who were supposed to train manufacturing employees…
Gotta subsidise the undead oil economy or else the old farts might actually have to read a journal and try to figure where else to invest the money they don’t need!
If ONLY Iran would OPEN up the Straight
that was ALREADY Open BEFORE Trump bombed them for some Reason!WE wouldn’t be in This Mess! We NEED Trump to FixTrump’s Fuck Up!Iran!-NOT Sheep Republicans!
Trump officials bracing for nightmare scenario of renewable energy and end of global hegemony.
americans complaining about gas prices will never be not funny
He really wants to kill the economy so his rich buddies can buy everything up cheap.
They’re gonna nationalize our oil aren’t they? Required sale to the government at a set rate and then government will turn around and sell into the domestic and international markets to balance prices at our pumps.
It’s about the only option other than stop bombing Iran and that’s not happening.
That would be hilarious actually
Oh Undoubtedly. I look forward to all the explanations as to why it’s Capitalism when we do it and Socialism when Venezuela does it.
Trump could ban US oil export. That would bring the price of gas down here.
He won’t do that.
That would bring the price of gas down here.
I’m doubtful of that. Oil is a globalized commodity, and international prices will still affect local sales, even if none of our oil actually comes through the strait of Hormuz.
I’m convinced the strait being closed is the whole point of this mess. It’s just an excuse to charge more despite local production costs not changing. If export were banned, I think they’d just lower production to keep their margins high.
The point is that banning the export of US oil would cause oil to stop being a globalized commodity (in the US.) US production and US consumption have not changed since the Iran war started. But US prices are up since US production is being shipped to places where their supply from Hormuz is cut off.
Other responder said that US refining can’t refine US oil, which would be extremely odd and I hadn’t heard that before but if true would indeed destroy my logic here.
The oil refineries we have in the US attention equipped to handle the type of oil we can actually produce here. We export just about all of our oil, and just about all of our oil product are refined from foreign oil.
If we didn’t export US oil, we wouldn’t be able to do much with it.
I’m nowhere near an expert, but that’s solely a cost issue. We certainly have the tech and the oil companies would be happy to retool with taxpayer dollars. What’s another trillion or three between friends?
It’s not just cost, but also time. This issue is quite a pressing concern, I am no expert but from what I’ve read they can’t quickly retool for a different type of oil, it would be a longer term kind of thing, not fast enough for the current crisis
One idiotic move administration has made is to increase ethanol content of gasoline. Ethanol is corn based in US. Cost of corn is fertilizer based. The futures price of corn has only increased about 10%, while fertilizer costs are up 100%, and so no logical reason to plant corn that has been losing money for farmers for last 5 years.
Easiest plan to bring down energy prices would be to import chinese solar tariff free, to use on ethanol corn fields in Nebraska. Leaving room for Corn between panel rows when it is viable to grow corn for food again. There’s even a path towards 0 cost electricity for 24/7 datacenters or other loads. https://lemmy.ca/post/59615557?scrollToComments=true
Your linked AI slop post has a LOT of assumptions and it’s kinda expensive. If the total system capex is 50k for 1 kW load, it’ll be 500 million for a modern 10MW data center. Then covering the deficit off employee BEVs for peanuts a kWh: That assumes you have enough employees for that and that they’re willing to wear their batteries for this.
But yes, the whole ethanol requirement is stupid for a country that has its own oil anyway
You’re right about cost assumptions of renewables. Like I said, tariff free Chinese costs + 30% local premium results in 0 electricity costs if $2/kg hydrogen revenue. Higher costs would still pay off at 10c/kwh from datacenter/other sales.
West coast will run out of jet fuel in 2-3 weeks. US politics are so hateful, Texas will likely refuse to ship any by truck to say that this is “woke green policies” fault.
Per an adjacent discussion on NPR, California is considered a “petrol-island”. Conventional shipping over land is both difficult and inefficient because they’re tucked on the other side of a mountain chain. Coming from Texas, willing or not, seems to have it’s own additional expense.
Difficult sure. Would you prefer that it is impossible to fly to California, difficult? Shouldn’t be. Cost of Jet fuel from GCC would make the difficult trip from Texas profitable.
Trump administration -> Epstein network
Trump officials prepping for nighttime scenario as Trump dies…
Isn’t the US a net exporter of oil. Can someone explain to me why this wouldn’t benefit them? Sell oil an increased cost with increased demand globally, cover costs at home with supplying the locally refined stuff for the population.
Anyone more in the know able to explain the gaps in my understanding?
My theory, it’s not the government that has the oil, it’s the oil companies. And because this is capitalism, the oil companies will charge as much as the can. So even if it is made here, the drastically reduced supply globally means the companies can change more, and so they will.
My theory, it’s not the government that has the oil
That is not a theory, that is just a fact.
In theory the government could and should impose price controls, for the common good. But Trump and Republicans are obviously not going to tell the oil oligarks that they can’t have lots of money.
Yeah, fair enough. I am just not very informed on the oil industry, so I didn’t want to sound like I did in case I was talking out my ass. Good to know I was correct in my assumption.
I am just not very informed on the oil industry, so I didn’t want to sound like I did in case I was talking out my ass.
No no, I am not criticizing. I am all for using the correct level of qualifiers when speculating about things you know you don’t know with certainty.
If only the people talking out of their ass about the current conflict in the middle east would do the same…
who do you think gave this admin their orders to kick the ME hornetnest? oil barons are making a killing right now
Part of it has to do with the fact that most of the oil we extract in the US now is shale oil, which is lighter and thinner than what they pull out with traditional extraction. Most of the refineries in the US are not equipped to process shale oil, so we export most of it, and import what we can process.
The more exports of US oil/lng the higher the price for Americans. It’s not as though oligarchy pays taxes, so when you say America makes money, there is no trickle down to Americans.
You’re not wrong. The US could do that. But in the US there is no forcing function to make the companies subsidize the oil locally and they would rather make more profit by selling oil at the market price.
TIL oil is only half the input cost of making gas.
Crude oil is the main ingredient in gasoline — accounting for roughly half the cost of a gallon of gas — so when oil prices rise, gas prices typically follows suit.
get in line for windmill powered EVs. self own king
I really want to see Iran say they’ll reopen it only after trump is personally handed over to stand trial for his war crimes…
It will never work, but it’ll fracture his support and more importantly he’ll be ome convinced it’s gonna happen and start turning on his own cronies even if they’re loyal.
Except it’s going to devastate a lot of people financially who don’t deserve it. So ireally don’t find it funny.
But if gas hits that high it will devastate rural areas and the people who voted for this
30% of the American public voted for these grifting idiots, not just the president, but his enablers too. This slightly disproportionately affects rural areas. We should be getting off of gas and investing in green energy anyway.
I choose to laugh. It’s better than what the people of Iran got out of it.
Man, I wonder if a better president would have come up with some kind of treaty to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
US&A has nuclear weapons and is obviously a threat to world right now.
While that’s true, it doesn’t really contribute to the conversation or the problem at hand.
Are you implying that because the US has nuclear weapons that you’d like Iran to have them too? Because that’s the only way I can relate this back.
I’m thinking Trump murdered the one man responsible for the IRGC not acquiring nuclear weapons.
You know, the Ayatollah with the fatwa against acquiring nuclear weapons.
Remember those weapons over which US&A started the war in Iraq? They’ve probably existed as much as theirs in Iran. I don’t believe I’ve seen Iran attack anyone before it was attacked. US&A on the other hand…
I think you missed the point, which is that I think the way to handle this was Obama’s treaty before Trump dismantled it because it was an Obama accomplishment.
How many times has iran been attacked for being two weeks away from nuclear weapons in the past 50 years?
What are the chances these are all true?
in last 40 years, there were 2000 weeks. 1998/2000 or 99.9% of weeks this statement was proven false.
It was not. Iran’s military wanted to stay close so that if the religious fatwa the ayatollah pronounced against acquiring nuclear weapons, they’re have one quickly.
Yes, Trump murdered the one man responsible for preventing Iran from having nuclear weapons, and control went to his son who just saw every direct member of his family murdered in front of him.
Pay the piper now or pay him later when the earth rises 2C over global average due to no one changing their habits.
Idle hands are the devil’s playground.
If this doesn’t devastate those fuckers I hope literally anything else does. They need to pay.
Who is it going to financially devastate? Most Americans have no investments, no savings, and no retirement. 10,000% inflation is almost as hard to deal with as 50% for people living paycheck to paycheck already. For the investors/ruling class, a free falling dollar does a lot more damage.
Trump and Netanyahu.
