Go on Joe, nationalize the oil companies
President Biden may resort to using emergency powers if American oil companies don’t increase output at their refineries, the president told oil CEOs in a series of letters Wednesday.
Biden’s statement blames oil companies for running “historically high profit margins” even as Americans experience surging gas prices. Biden has recently faced criticism for a lack of executive action aimed at curbing inflation.
“There is no question that Vladimir Putin is principally responsible for the intense financial pain the American people and their families are bearing,” Biden wrote. “But amid a war that has raised gasoline prices more than $1.70 per gallon, historically high refinery profit margins are worsening that pain.”
No question about it; all our economic woes are due to a combination of Putin Putin Putin and price-gouging oil companies. I don’t even think Biden believes this; then again, it’s hard to know what’s going on in his somewhat-cognitively-challenged mind.
Why would business people want to increase production in such an uncertain environment where the government has declared them the enemy?
Biden talks about being in a “war” and the war affecting things. He’s right — except the war is the one he declared on the energy industry. He’s blaming the victims of his war. The purpose of this is to play to his leftist base who believe this lie that it’s because of gouging oil companies. They don’t ask why these oil companies weren’t gouging us all under Trump? But that’s what this letter is about — to say, “See? I threatened them with a strongly worded letter.”
How many people are fooled by this, or approve of it? I don’t think anyone who isn’t already in the Democrats’ camp, and perhaps not even all of them.
My understanding is at this point a large part of the current problem is a significant loss of oil refinery capacity over the course of the pandemic. It’s an issue that will take a very long time to address regardless of Joe Biden idiotic threats.
Magical thinking is contagious.
Or maybe it’s just seductive.
Or maybe “Anyone and anything but Trump” has become, for all too many, the new uber-morality….
IOW, if Trump = Make America Great Again, then the MORAL IMPERATIVE is…to weaken if not destroy the country and then salt the earth it stood on (preferably so that it can never be made “great” again…even if for most of those doing the destroying, and salting, it was never “great” in the first place).
OTOH, once COULD make the case that Trump was elected because “the People”, or most of them, understood that Obama’s goal was to fatally weaken (i.e., “transform”) the country and that the GOPe was not willing or able to do much about it, which realization resulted in Trump’s surprise—for most—victory.
But the Democrats were SIMPLY NOT going to permit that to happen again, NO THEY WERE NOT, and so…the “Great (Say it ain’t so, Joe?) Steal”
File under: Einstein’s third law (of politics).
and he was better than bernie sanders, why exactly, this is the problem with the democrats who are at the same level of the Point Four labourites in the 80s, corbyn is a relic from that period,
To Nonapod’s point I believe I heard that there is a somewhat more than normal number of refineries offline. Those that are online are running at just over 94% capacity which is very good though not exceptional this time of year.
From ABC News:
Does Slow Joe know what a profit margin is? Sure profit dollars are up big time, but profit margin is the percentage ratio of those profits relative to the input costs.
Here is a website with the various profit margin metrics for the oil refinery biz.
https://csimarket.com/Industry/industry_Profitability_Ratios.php?ind=606
The table at the top looks at the last year. If you want to look at earlier years there is a control box in the upper right for that.
Over the last year gross margin is down from 25% to 8.6%.
EBITDA margin is down a little to 3.6%
Operating margin is flat at about 1.8%
Net margin went from a loss to +4.3%
Oooo! 4.3% profit margin. Better tell Tim Cook of Apple. Maybe he is tired of making 40%+ profit margins will want to buy some refineries with a 4.3% profit margin.
I think one of things that happens is that if you have a big fixed cost like salaries, and all the petroleum values double, then salary costs become a much smaller fraction of say revenue.
To be painfully clear, those numbers I cited above are TTM numbers. Trailing Twelve Months. Which means that a TTM number from a year ago actually includes data from all the year before that. So there is really a two year span of data included in the numbers I was citing.
So, let me get this straight, those evil greedy, profiteering, polluting, capitalists that control the oil companies are deliberately unwilling to produce gasoline that is selling for a record price? Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Biden’s remark come across like Amber Heard on a witness stand except the press won’t question either of them. When you realize this is intentional on his part, then you’ll know oil prices won’t be going lower and the economy will be much worse than today.
Don’t tempt him. He and Barry nationalized the student loan industry which is over a trillion dollar industry back in 2009/2010. Remind me again how that turned out.
Set the ‘precedent’ for nationalizing the oil companies and the argument against ‘nationalizing’ the assets of every billionaire and millionaire evaporates.
But why stop there? Nationalize the assets of Big Tech, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, the six major media holding companies like Disney, Comcast, the Ivy League trust funds, etcetera, etcetera…
Seize those assets, put them into a trust and pay out a yearly dividend to every adult who can prove US citizenship.
That’s how Alaska handles its State oil revenues.
The elite want to do away with the peons private property… well, let them eat cake too.
At another blog, someone posted this juxtaposition:
EPA shut down a major refinery over “environmental justice” concerns in May.
Biden blamed gas prices on refiners reducing capacity yesterday.
https://mobile.twitter.com/DonDraperClone/status/1537013198108368899
Geoffrey, I doubt they would demand proof of US citizenship. Also, I’m not sure how much longer Alaska will able to pay those dividends. The double whammy of failure to approve a LNG pipeline from the slope and convincing banks not to finance ANWR development has sealed the fate of Alaska oil.
Fools or Knaves? I say knaves.
Oh how I remember the Gas Shortage of past times, and the lines, and the limit to the amount you could purchase. Fun Times. Coming again.
Saw a Safeway here in WA yesterday that had gas at $4.93 which is about 50 to 75 cents cheaper than just about anywhere else and there were lines out into the street. Have also heard of a couple places with $100 purchase limits.
Nationalize… In the ’70s, my father wrote a letter to the Editor suggesting that oil companies be nationalized. Little did my father realize that I would go on to work in the oil field, mostly in Latin America.
My experience with government owned and run companies in Latin America convinced me that Socialism was a flop. Nationalized telephone companies in Latin America: pure disaster. Such as in Argentina, waiting for a year to get a landline- and also paying $1,500 (~ $10,000 in 2022 $) to get it installed. Nationalized oil companies I experienced were, for the most part, disasters. Venezuela’s PDVSA was an exception- a well-run government owned oil company in Latin America. It was, until Hugo Chavez took PDVSA over, thereby reminding us of the folk tale about killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.
There is a reason the US leads in fracking technology. The reason is that the government doesn’t control it. Every other country in the world owns their oil. And then they hire US workers to get it out and to the market.
The Brits could be entirely self sufficient in natural gas. But they banned fracking, and it was the Conservative Party who did it. The number one greenie is Boris Johnson’s wife.
Word is that “no more green shit” is the new motto with inflation and recession looming.
Well, “Biden” did say that if Bribe Back Better DID pass, then nobody would need to pay for it…
(Well, as it turned out, it DIDN’T pass—at least not in its original “format”—and EVERYONE is paying for it, and how!!!….)
Democrats (ALL Democrats) are now simply the enemy and must be treated as such.
Somebody ask Brandon how much aviation fuel Air Force One burns per minute and how much it costs. I’m all for having him flown to Delaware by helicopter on the weekends . . . .
“Golden, Colo. — The scramble to ease escalating gasoline prices around the globe is an “exclamation point” for the worldwide need to transition to renewable energy, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters on Wednesday.
“No one has ever weaponized access to the sun,” Granholm said, referring to the impacts the Russian invasion of Ukraine has had on oil. “No one has ever weaponized access to wind. The way we are energy secure is to build homegrown clean energy, and other countries are looking to that as well.” ”
https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/3501901-granholm-gas-price-struggle-an-exclamation-point-for-need-to-accelerate-clean-energy/
This is the Secretary of Energy. Hasn’t anyone in her agency told her the facts about intermittent energy sources? Can she actually believe this crap? These anti-fossil fuel cultists are talking about faith not facts. Or……it’s a carefully devised plan to control energy and thereby our lives. I know what I think, how about you all?
Again, they are enemies of you and of the Republic and should be treated accordingly.
JJ,
What do I think?
That ‘… it’s a carefully devised plan to control energy and thereby our lives.’ !
Have overheard a few conversations about oil companies are making record profits this year.
I think Sundowner believes what he is told, does he have the capacity to question anything?
JJ, lots of them actually believe it.
Granholm needs watch some original Star Trek, particularly Montgomery Scott and his famous line: “Cap’n, I canna change the laws of physics!”
The magical thinking of these people is beyond comprehension. I’ve dealt with such people, and no matter what facts, calculations etc are presented to them, they refuse to accept what is presented. It truly is a fanatical religious cult.
The irresponsible energy policies of European governments, especially Germany, seconded and egged on by the Biden administration, have led directly to the Ukraine invasion, both by providing Putin with oil/gas funding and by providing him with the knowledge that Euro countries will have energy constraints on their reactions to the invasion.
As Robert Zubrin has been saying, the shells and missiles that are killing Ukrainians are Germany-funded.
France, with its commitment to nuclear power, stands as an exception.
Liberals really are this stupid. Jaw dropping, mind numbing, incomprehensibly stupid. They reject the fundamentals of science (covid, global warming, energy, sex). They reject the clear and obvious lessons of history, business and economics.
They reject the fundamental truths of human nature. In the end, that’s the issue. Liberals are defined by their relentless temper tantrum over being human.
Perhaps they want to be gods. Their hubris dominates. We are living in a Greek tragedy writ large.
Exxon-Mobil net income for trailing 12 months was $25.8 billion. For 2012 and 2013, it was 44.8 and 32.5 respectively. And for 2020, it was NEGATIVE 22.4 There was talk about XOM needing to cut its dividend, which it actually did not do.
Biden has also been attacking the ocean shipping industry. This is a cyclic industry, which tends to do very well in some years and very badly in others. And the shipping shortages driving up freight prices have been substantially due to shore-side problems, including port and railroad congestion and trucking problems.
Ryan Petersen, who runs the digital freight forwarder Flexport, responds to Biden:
“Ocean freight prices are down almost 50% from last year’s peak and still falling fast. Ocean carriers have ship orders that will add more than 30% more capacity to the global container fleet in 3 yrs. Call @Flexport
if you know companies that need to save on ocean freight Joe!”
These anti-fossil fuel cultists are talking about faith not facts. Or……it’s a carefully devised plan to control energy and thereby our lives. I know what I think, how about you all?
I think it is magical thinking and they have no idea what to do now. Doubling down is a reaction to criticism. I agree it is a religious cult. The greenies are the source of the dogma. “Climate Change” is the latest version of “Global Warming.” I remember Phil Gramm talking about “Hunting Democrats with Dogs.” Maybe that’s where we are headed. Phil Gramm is still around and he could help by speaking out. He did not like Trump in 2016 but I wonder what he would say now? He is 80.
I suspect, instead of a prelude to nationalizing oil companies, Biden is laying the groundwork to forbid sales of oil and natural gas outside the US. POTUS has the authority to do so without Congressional approval. I also suspect that doing so will lower gas and heating oil prices in the US but leave Germany more vulnerable to Russian strong-arming.
Kate, and others: “JJ, lots of them actually believe it.”
Arrrgggghhhhh! How can anyone with an IQ above room temperature believe this steaming pile of BS? Does no one ever look at a basic physics book, ask about the state of battery technology, look at the implications of the loss of reliable electricity on western civilization, ask if reliable storage for wind and solar energy has been perfected, and other obvious questions? If not, the stupid is much deeper than I ever dreamed
What they want to do to western civilization is far worse than what Russia is doing to the Ukraine. When the war ends, the Ukraine can rebuild. When we no longer have reliable, affordable energy, our GDP and living standards will shrink to Third World status and will be difficult to recover. And they blithely ignore the fact that China, Russia, India, and others have no intentions of going green. This kind of stupid is what ruins once great nations.
A well known commenter deferrs
https://meaninginhistory.substack.com/p/the-economy-or-bust-er-?s=r
“How can anyone with an IQ above room temperature believe this steaming pile of BS?”
It’s because they never hear or see anything except this steaming pile of BS.
All roads lead back to our feckless, lying news media. (They lie. They lie with malice aforethought. And they lie even when the truth is a better story!) Most people – even some of those with an IQ above room temperature – are lazy when it comes to getting information on current events. They read their local newspaper and watch the TV news – and THAT’S IT!
Unless that changes – we are doomed.
Democrat voters believe that they are morally superior for supporting the narrative. Not just morally superior, but literally saviors of the planet.
Since they often require safe rooms and coloring books to soothe their feelings, I’ve wondered if we might be able to reduce some of the devastation they wreak if we could make them feel special as planet saviors by giving them superhero jammies, a cape and a top secret decoder ring.