Benchmark crude oil prices have surged to $115 per barrel.

The ‘pre-Russian invasion of Ukraine’ rise in gas prices has been the tax Americans pay at the pump for Biden’s administration pro-climate and anti-fossil fuel policies.

Upon taking office in January 2021, the Biden administration implemented policies and regulations that have been extremely detrimental to the exploration, production and investment in domestic fossil fuel energy:

• They rejoined the Paris climate agreement,
• They terminated the Keystone XL pipeline,
• They suspended all oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
• They began working on his pledge to ban all “new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters.”

The Biden administration entered office promising to “end fossil fuel” and signaled a hostility to the fossil fuel industry with a major push for clean energy, including a pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent of 2005 levels by 2030. The result has been that investment, exploration and production has fallen across the oil and gas industry within the U.S.

When you announce your intention to tax and regulate the fossil fuel industry out of existence, investors, along with fossil fuel executives and corporate boards listened, writes Marc A. Thiessen, in a Washington Post opinion piece. The results are less production and capital investment — and higher prices.

Considering that the price of gasoline never rose above $3.04 in the year prior to Biden taking office. Once Biden entered office, gasoline prices broke that threshold in four months — long before Putin invaded Ukraine and economic sanctions were imposed on Russian energy.

Entrepreneur Elon Musk — the founder of the electric car company Tesla — says we need to drill for more oil and gas at in the United States to alleviate world wide pressure on crude oil supplies brought on by the ban of Russian oil exports.

Many billionaire investors, such as Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, believe that oil prices will continue to remain elevated in the coming quarters and are putting their reserves of capital were their long term investment beliefs are.

References:

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/10/biden-gas-prices-hides-behind-ukraine-suffering/
2. https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/03/07/looks-like-warren-buffett-just-bet-big-on-an-oil-p/