Biden will tap US oil reserves for 6 months to bring down gas prices – National & International News – THU 31Mar2022

Biden to tap US oil reserves for 6 months to bring down gas prices. What else is being done about gas prices and what can we expect? US intel: Putin’s fearful military advisors are lying to him about Ukraine.

NATIONAL NEWS

Biden to tap US oil reserves for 6 months to bring down gas prices

With the average price of gas at $4.23 per gallon, President Biden announced today that he will tap the US Strategic Oil Reserve to help bring the price down. The administration will release 1 million barrels a day every day for the next 6 months. The White House hopes this will go some way to offset the loss of 3 million daily barrels of Russian oil that will disappear from the US market starting in April.

The price of a barrel of crude did dip slightly to just over $100 a barrel ahead of the announcement. However, gas prices always rise over the summer, so it’s unlikely tapping the reserves will significantly affect gas prices. The only ways to meaningfully reduce gas prices are 1). increasing supply and 2). reducing demand and dependence on fossil fuels. The administration is also exploring options on both these fronts.

Encouraging domestic production

Biden will ask Congress to impose penalties on oil and gas companies that lease US public lands for oil but aren’t using them. However, this strategy has some significant drawbacks. Firstly, it will take time, possibly several months, for companies to ramp up stalled production. Secondly, since the US does not have a nationalized energy sector, companies can sell oil drilled on US lands abroad. So it’s unlikely that penalties on oil companies will make a dent in prices at the pump in the near term.

Diversifying into clean energy

According to the Intercept, the White House has been drafting an executive order to improve storage of clean energy. The order would invoke the Defense Production Act to boost the production of minerals used in batteries for things like electric vehicles. So far, there’s been no comment about when or if Biden will actually sign this draft.

There is already growing demand for electric vehicles in the US, but these vehicles remain in short supply and are still unaffordable for most people. This is, in part, because of a shortage of these minerals. In the long term, increasing production of these minerals would reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, thus reducing demand and the price of oil. However, these benefits would also take time to materialize.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

US intel: Putin’s fearful military advisors are lying to him about Ukraine

During a press briefing yesterday, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield shared some insight from US intelligence about the rift between Vladimir Putin and his military advisors. 

Bedingfield said that, “Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing, and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions, because his senior advisers are too afraid to tell him the truth”. She did not present specific evidence for the claim. But both the Pentagon and British intelligence have since chimed in supporting this assessment.

Paranoid Putin

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