After spending most of the summer taking credit for falling gas prices, the Biden administration is looking for someone to blame now that pump prices are rising again. Their two latest targets are oil companies and gas station owners. President Biden recently admonished "companies running gas stations" for "making a lot of profit" and ordered them to "bring down the prices you're charging at the pump." But an analysis of data from a global trade association finds gas station profit margins are down drastically to only a few cents per gallon.
Karr Ingham, Texas petroleum economist, says Biden should know better than to blame gas station owners. "So are you suggesting that every gasoline station owner has colluded with every other gasoline station owner to raise prices? There's no way they can do this...that's not how this market works," he tells KTRH.
"It's utter nonsense, and the administration knows this," he continues. "I guess it's just classic political deflection, that's about the only thing I can come up with."
What is behind rising pump prices is low crude oil supply, which has been exacerbated by the Biden administration's restrictions on domestic oil production. The result has been Biden criticizing Saudi Arabia over recent OPEC cuts, and draining our oil reserves to artificially inflate the market. "We were more shielded from what OPEC did or did not do, when we were producing a million-plus more barrels of crude oil per day than we are right now," says Ingham.
"We're simply not producing as much crude oil in the United States as we were a few short years ago," he continues. "Which means we are more susceptible to an OPEC cut."