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!
It honestly makes me sick that this appears to be the line for most Americans. Fuck this country.
To be fair, once fuel prices go up the cost of EVERYTHING also goes up. So no it’s not just about pain at the pump, it’s pain at the grocery check out. Pain when the oil truck comes to deliver your liquid heat. Pain when you buy anything plastic, anything grown with fertilizers. People don’t realize petroleum is in almost everything! And if it doesn’t use a petroleum product in manufacturing, it certainly does in shipping.
Prices for the kinds of fuel ocean going ships burn have increased 25%-35% depending on the port.
Yep and the same cart of groceries I spent 100 bucks on last year is about 200 now :( Trump was right. So much winning we’ll get sick of it. Trouble is only the billionaires are winning, at our expense. I’m not having fun anymore.
Youre right, but also if we weren’t using up as much for fuel as we do there would be much more left for other applications
No kidding. I think our world leaders have forgotten that there is only so much oil in the ground, once it’s all burnt up that’s it poof it’s gone. Makes it even more insane that their bombing oil fields and refineries. If u want a small example of how our billionaire rulers have boned us look at the racket from synthetic rope getting hemp banned. The tldr is DuPont made synthetic rope, but hemp which is sustainable and strong got outlawed due in part to them lobbying. We have a government that exists only to stuff rich peoples pockets from what it seems. There’s more examples than can be listed of private corporations creating rules to make themselves the winners at the expense of the people and the planet, and it’s been going on for over a hundred years and just getting exponentially worse. There’s a reason wealth just keeps consolidating.
Exactly. Your house could be solar, you could be charging your EV from your solar, and so your house power and transportation costs mostly negated, but everything else would still have an increase.
Ive never heard liquid heat before, interesting. We call it heating oil where I’m from (southern new england).
I’m in northern New England, moved here from Southern New England. Moved there from Texas. Moved there from Italy. I’m not “from” anywhere so I picked up some odd sayings in my travels LOL. I also make stupid shit up on occasion, gotta keep people on their toes.
Ah ok lol.
The only thing that keeps most people complacent is they can manage to scrape by with their meager salary buying crappy goods. Take that away and Americans might get more revolutionary.
“americans are 3 hot meals from a revolution” is the saying I think.
Yeah, but I don’t think America existed when that phrase was first said. More like “The people are…”
No one cares about victims of rape and pedophilia, that’s other people, caring about other people is un-American.
That’s just false
$ is the only thing sacred in america, always has been
When people are struggling to get by and exhausted from the news, they end up focusing on themselves. The reality is most Americans don’t have the energy, time, or resources to focus on something that’s disconnected from their lives - including attrocities on the other side of the planet.
But gas prices hit HARD. When you’re spending 20-30% of your income on gas and the price of that gas doubles, it’s a problem even before it makes everything else skyrocket in price.
That excuse is honestly not acceptable. Americans have had ample time and opportunity to consider the impact of their voting decisions. This is their choice. Collectively, the country has failed.
Too ignorant, selfish, or stupid.
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
What exactly are they “bracing” for? Not a single one of them has to pay out of pocket for it.
They are bracing for the voters to finally turn on them. Commit fraud? It’s fine my gas is cheap. Sex with children? Eh whatever I don’t want to consider if that’s true or not as long as my gas is cheap. Bomb a school overseas? Whatever you’ve gotta do to keep my gas cheap. GAS PRICES ARE UP?! WTF IS THIS ADMINISTRATION DOING?! VOTE THEM OUT.
It’s sickening, but it seems the price of gas is really all that matters to the Republican voter.
This country has done nothing except wait for someone else to solve the “trump problem.” Protests are great to show unity and dissatisfaction, but I don’t think the regime cares. Protests are not force, and the only thing, if it isn’t obvious, this administration understands is abuse and use of force. They’d probably be fine with a Tiananmen Square scenario in the US, it would justify the final grab for power.
That said, I hope you’re right and gas is finally enough to force change. Hopefully we don’t replace one idiot with another.
Its simply time to disobey. If you live next to an AI Datacenter now is your chance to shine.
To be fair, a coal rolling Duramax is pretty expensive to feed.
It now costs the average Duramax owner $2 to drive down their driveway to their mailbox and back.
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.
Trump administration -> Epstein network
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 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.
