The Complicated Reality Behind High Gas Prices
by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times,
Average gas prices in the United States have gone up by almost 40 percent since March 1.
# THE TAKE: Stop Blaming "Complexity" for What's Deliberate
The 40% spike since March? That's not —it's *profitable*.
Watch the SEC filings: Exxon Mobil reported $17.9 billion in *profit* last quarter while refineries operated at 94% capacity. They're *choosing* not to increase supply. Chevron's doing the same play. These aren't victims of market forces; they're architects of scarcity pricing.
Biden's strategic petroleum reserve sales? Theater. You can't offset artificial supply constraints with 180 million barrels while Big Oil keeps drilling permits collecting dust.
The "complicated reality" narrative obscures the actual reality: Four companies control 60% of U.S. refining capacity. That's not a market—it's a cartel running interference on behalf of shareholders while Americans choose between fuel and groceries.
Stop normalizing extraction. Name the profiteers. This disruption has triggered severe shortages in Europe and Asia, driving prices upward across the board. Yet here lies the first crucial detail the mainstream press downplays—the United States gets almost no oil through the Strait of Hormuz. By conventional logic, American consumers should be insulated from this crisis. The country produces enough petroleum to export rather than import. But this is where the official "energy independence" narrative collapses against economic reality. The reason for America's vulnerability is deceptively simple: oil is a fungible commodity traded on global markets. As Patrick De Haan, petroleum analyst with GasBuddy, explained to The Epoch Times, "everyone is impacted by the events" because crude can be shipped anywhere. Countries facing acute shortages—particularly in Europe and Asia—are willing to pay premium prices for available supply. According to Paul Sankey, president of Sankey Research, the result is "huge demand to export the product," which creates upward pressure on domestic American prices regardless of domestic supply levels. This exposes a critical flaw in how policymakers and media frame energy policy. Some might assume the government could simply prohibit oil exports to keep prices down domestically. However, experts consulted by The Epoch Times indicate this would likely cause more problems than it solves, a counterintuitive reality that rarely appears in mainstream coverage. The constraint lies not in political will but in refinement capacity and crude specifications. American oil, produced primarily through fracking, is classified as "light sweet"—easy to refine with minimal impurities. refineries are actually engineered to process heavier crude. Much of Middle Eastern oil qualifies as "medium" grade, while Canadian production is "heavy sour," and Venezuelan reserves are extremely heavy and sulphurous. This technical mismatch means simply restricting exports would leave American refineries undersupplied with the specific grades they're designed to handle, while creating global shortages that would ultimately drive prices higher everywhere. Disclosure: NewsAnarchist aggregates from public records, API feeds (Federal Register, CourtListener, MuckRock, Hacker News), and independent media. AI-assisted synthesis. Always verify primary sources linked above.
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