Benzinga - by Neil Dennis, Benzinga Staff Writer.
A Republican senator who criticized President Joe Biden on social media for high gas prices and his administration’s energy policy is facing a backlash for politicizing U.S. energy production data.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who has endorsed Donald Trump‘s 2024 presidential campaign, posted the following on X on Monday night:
Joe Biden has destroyed U.S. energy independence – gas prices remain skyhigh and our dependence on foreign countries for oil only strengthens our adversaries. @realDonaldTrump will restore U.S. energy dominance. https://t.co/PoqIbdFaPe— Marsha Blackburn (@VoteMarsha) January 22, 2024
Data shows that crude oil prices are trading just above levels seen during the low-demand pandemic era; gasoline prices are down there too, at less than $3-a-gallon and domestic oil and gas production rates are at all-time highs.
The market price of U.S. Nymex WTI crude currently stands at around $74 a barrel and is higher than the average price during the 2017-2021 Trump presidency, but certainly not sky-high given the effects of wars in and around two major oil producing areas: Russia/Ukraine and the Middle East.
The United States Oil Fund (NYSE:USO), an exchange traded fund that tracks the price of light-sweet crude, shows a similar pattern.
Meanwhile, U.S. oil supply has never been healthier. Department of Energy data shows that domestic production stood at a record 13.3 million barrels a day during the latest week of data.
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Fossil Fuel Investment Increases
Both ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) and Chevron (NYSE:CVX) — the two biggest U.S. oil and gas companies — announced in November plans for mergers costing around $50 billion-$60 billion.
Indeed, such is the independence of the U.S. energy market, it became a net exporter of oil in 2020, for the first time in around 70 years, and has remained so throughout the Biden presidency.
And although the latest inflation data showed consumer prices remained a little sticky in December, that wasn’t due to energy prices.
Some people are now paying less than $3 a gallon for gasoline at the pump, while heating bills should be cheaper as natural gas prices fall back to trend and government assistance programs under the federal Inflation Reduction Act help cut costs.
Reaction To Blackburn’s Remarks
Patrick De Haan, analyst at Gas Buddy, said: “I just don’t get the blatant lies from pols about oil/gas prices. It wouldn’t be hard to find truthful points to make, but to cite an ‘attack’ on ‘energy’ and ‘sky high’ prices when the US is producing record amounts of crude oil and oil is $75 is just beyond me.”
Others pointed to the record rise in U.S. production of renewable energy.
One poster, under the name of HistoryBits, said: “American green energy production and investment is at record-highs, helped by the Infrastructure Act. America is less reliant on foreign energy imports than ever before, but of course the facts inconveniently get in the way of the GOP lies.”
There’s also the fact that energy is a stratified market with many elements and, at the consumer level, is taxed at different rates depending on which state you live in. This information can be twisted in such a way that can appear to underline a political campaign agenda.
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