Experts dismiss claim oil company gauging driving price hikes

Big Oil, Vladimir Putin, Martians – everyone is to blame for high oil prices except the president who is presiding over them.

According to the Washington Times:

Big Oil has been the go-to boogeyman for President Biden and Democrats over alleged “price gouging,” with “Putin’s price hike” a close runner-up.

But profits made by the oil industry — while at record levels — ebb and flow with global energy markets, not because the firms are manipulating costs, according to market analysts.

“It’s just political posturing and pandering,” Ed Hirs, an energy economics professor at the University of Houston, said of the president’s anti-corporate rhetoric. “If the focus is just making profits, when is [Mr. Biden] going to turn his guns on Apple?”

Apple made more than $25 billion in the first quarter of this year and nearly $95 billion in 2021, staggering numbers that are far higher than that of any energy corporation.

Recent high earnings of top oil companies allowed the industry to recoup its record losses during the pandemic and returned billions of dollars to shareholders.

The Wall Street Journal notes that President Biden’s demand that gas stations decrease their prices is a burden that would fall on small businesspeople:

You’d think that the President’s Ivy League-educated economic advisers would have informed him that large refiners own fewer than 5% of all gas stations in America. More than 60% are operated by an individual or family that owns a single store, and the rest are independently owned chains or grocery stores that sell fuel. Many license brands from refiners.