That would be “crack” in the Hunter sense, I mean.
Washington—CNN — The Biden administration launched a full-scale pressure campaign in a last-ditch effort to dissuade Middle Eastern allies from dramatically cutting oil production, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
But that effort appears to have failed, following Wednesday’s crucial meeting of OPEC+, the international cartel of oil producers that, as expected, announced a significant cut to output in an effort to raise oil prices. That in turn will likely cause US gasoline prices to rise at a precarious time for the Biden administration, just five weeks before the midterm elections.
On Wednesday morning, OPEC+ oil ministers meeting in Vienna agreed to an even larger production cut than the White House had feared — 2 million barrels per day, beginning in November, according to a readout of the meeting released on Wednesday. The ministers said the cuts were necessary “in light of the uncertainty that surrounds the global economic and oil market outlooks.”
President Joe Biden told CNN’s Arlette Saenz on Wednesday that he was “concerned” about the cuts, which he viewed as “unnecessary.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters when asked about the move that “when it comes to OPEC, we’ve made clear our views to the OPEC members.”
For the past several days, Biden’s senior-most energy, economic and foreign policy officials were enlisted to lobby their foreign counterparts in Middle Eastern allied countries including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to vote against cutting oil production. Wednesday’s production cut amounts to the largest cut since the beginning of the pandemic and could lead to a dramatic spike in oil prices.
Some of the draft talking points circulated by the White House to the Treasury Department on Monday that were obtained by CNN framed the prospect of a production cut as a “total disaster” and warned that it could be taken as a “hostile act.”
“It’s important everyone is aware of just how high the stakes are,” said a US official of what was framed as a broad administration effort that is expected to continue in the lead up to the Wednesday OPEC+ meeting.
The White House is “having a spasm and panicking,” another US official said, describing this latest administration effort as “taking the gloves off.” According to a White House official, the talking points were being drafted and exchanged by staffers and not approved by White House leadership or used with foreign partners.
Oh sure, “taking the gloves off”…by getting on their knees, clasping their hands under the chin in a prayerful manner, and beseeching OPEC+ to pleasepleasepleasePLEEEAAAASE don’t hurt us! Or, as George Bailey put it, “I BEG of you, don’t do this thing!” And all this merely to preserve their unsustainable, unworkable, wholly destructive Green New Fever Dream, as Michael Shellenberger pithily notes.
“The Biden administration has leased fewer acres for oil-and-gas drilling offshore and on federal land than any other administration in its early stages dating back to the end of World War II”https://t.co/Nkj4JA3eph pic.twitter.com/Rf2GzoYJRf
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) October 4, 2022
The second Tweet explains it all, for any obtuse fool confused as to how a calamity of such extraordinary magnitude could possibly be befalling us under the benevolent, wise stewardship of King Gropey the Scoundrel.
The truly amusing thing here is how Biden’s Boobs are all a-puff and a-blow about their big, bad selves interpreting OPEC’s move as a “hostile act”—among the rhetorical options of international political conflict, just short of the phrase “act of war” in terms of bellicosity and implied threat—as if there was a single damned thing the intentionally-enfeebled Third Rate Power nation they misrule could or would do about it if it really was intended as such. It isn’t, naturally; OPEC+ is merely managing the resources under its control according to whatever will profit them the most.
It wasn’t the Oil Ticks that bent America over, depantsed it, and positioned it for a thorough rogering against its will. Nor was it the Saudis, or Russia, or Evil White Republican Extremists that wilfully took the US, its economy, and its people from energy independence to being totally reliant upon the less than tender mercies of the Middle Eastern oil cartel for the energy it requires to survive. No, the Biden junta did that to us themselves. It ought to be remembered, and it damned well ought to be avenged in due course.
Update! Proving yet again that the suppurating carbuncles skulking about behind the Biden junta‘s protective curtain of deceit will do absolutely anything, anything at all, to avoid allowing American-owned businesses to avail themselves of the nation’s abundant natural resources for the benefit of the much-abused American working stiff.
We went from arresting Maduro’s money launderers in US and seizing $100 billion of stolen money in U.S. banks to reducing sanctions to pump more heavy crude? All Biden had to do was to green light the Keystone pipeline to have heavy crude from a friendly, law-abiding nation. 1/2 https://t.co/CasU8wPFuF
— 🇺🇸Kyle Bass🇺🇦 (@Jkylebass) October 5, 2022
Incroyable.
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I don’t really have a problem with buying oil from the Middle Eastern tyrannies, even having to go into debt to do so. SFAIK, productivity of all established sites is down. Not just that production is down, which could be caused by reducing the pull of the pumps or by maintenance problems, but the sites are producing less oil for the same amount of effort to extract it. This could suggest that the known sites are running down.
If that’s the case, good! Let the oil ticks run dry and eventually starve. The US can just cancel our debts to them — sry-not-sry! — and ramp up production of our domestic oil sands and other fields.
I just wish that we’d build more piping, storage, and processing facilities for natural gas. We’re still flaring an utterly unreasonable amount of the natural gas that comes out of the ground, so much that California’s demands that new housing not have gas stoves and heat are nothing but retarded.
Ditto. My sentiments exactly.
The oil producers are cutting production now in the hope of keeping prices up during the coming depression. They will fail, eventually.