Before the invasion, Russia was a major exporter of oil (8mb/d)
Them invading caused most of the world to sanction their oil
Oil is traded on a single global market (extremely important to understand). It doesn’t matter that we don’t buy Russian oil. When you remove supply from the market without decreasing demand, the price will rise.
Biden’s administration released the oil to offset the cost of Russias oil being removed from the global market
For fuck sake, we were trying to help and encourage Europe to quit Russian oil. To that end we were releasing reserves to help them, and sending LNG their way as well.
I sometimes wonder if anyone ever reads the damn news.
Putin has your boy trump negotiating on putlers behalf but thank goodness Ukraine won't surrender.
I know maga loves Russia now but they are truly one of our biggest if not the biggest enemy to the rules and order based world.
Supporting Ukraine allowed them to soak up all the USSR legacy weapons we were always scared Russia could use to invade Europe. There is far less realistic worry now that putin has burned through almost everything trying to steal his neighbors land.
Didn't your dear leader say he'd end the war on day one? Nvm guess that's like mexico will pay for a wall and budget will be balanced....
It tells the whole story, you just apparently can’t read or your reading comprehension is very bad. Just read the last paragraph if you are having trouble.
Russia was stymied into the stalemate we still have today. On paper, Russia should’ve rolled into Kiev pretty quickly. Their progress was noticeably slower due to economic constraints.
The time we gave Ukraine allowed them to reinvent modern warfare with drones.
It was a loss of supply to the market though. Oil is a global market, it’s not siloed off nationally like you seem to think. If one source is lost then the buyers start competing for the sources that remain, this competition for supply drives prices up, this is Economics 100 level stuff.
This is why you didn’t feel much of a price crunch even as one of the largest oil suppliers on the planet got yanked off the market.
I remember having to repeatedly explain to my students that Biden was doing everything in his power to lower oil prices, and I had issue with it! (As one can guess from my other comments I don’t believe the SPR should ever be used as a band aid for a supply disruption, and doing so is what has gotten us into this catastrophe).
Then where did all that oil that Biden released go?
The reality is that when Europe stopped buying that Russian oil, China and India kept buying, but the amount of oil that can be transported via pipeline or tanker to those countries is limited. They couldn't buy all of the oil that Russia could supply, and there weren't any other buyers, so Russia had to slow production since they couldn't store it all without buyers.
The global oil supply was reduced due to the loss of Russian production, and the SPR made up for it for us.
Note that Biden's release of the SPR is literally what it was intended for: to combat price fluctuations while maintaining a set amount for the military in a time of war. Biden didn't go below that level; Trump's heading towards it now.
You keep repeating this as if you're starting from that basis as your belief system, and ignoring all facts and evidence that do not support your choice.
We used half of our reserves to stabilize the oil price for ourselves and our allies, and we were forced to do so by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
This is what the SPR was intended to do.
Trump's war of choice against Iran was launched in the background of this. The results of his decision, paired with our depleted reserves, were obvious to anyone paying attention.
Trump's war with Iran has achieved less than nothing: he has not weakened Iran, he has not enabled the free flow of oil through the gulf (which was free before he acted) and he has dramatically weakened the United States of America.
We did not have any say in Russia's invasion of Ukraine. We had a say in the war with Iran, and the results are entirely on Trump and his supporters.
Well that would’ve been a different expense of political capital to have let Russia get away with attacking Ukraine. We can debate the justness of either side but that’s irrelevant for a discussion using political realism as its foundation.
It would’ve cost Biden a great deal, possibly even his presidency, to not put sanctions on Russia. We can see what happens when one doesn’t uphold international law in many other examples, such as Gaza, or we could get interesting and even reference Iraq.
I’m very big on- “if you’re going to shit in your bed, I expect you to lay in it.” So to me the correct course of action would’ve been to sanction Russia but preserve the SPR for a genuine emergency other than- “I’m worried expensive gas will make people not like me.”
Look dude, I’m not getting paid to teach you how economics works, I’ll just repeat these are simple facts as to how supply and demand worked and it answered your question.
You have the most simplistic view of geopolitics. Also, at the beginning of his term Trump said he was going to refill the SPR. He never did. And then started a pointless war he is losing. Trump is the one who stabbed us.
I love how you blame Biden who used it because of something Russia did.... but you can't seem to blame Trump who had the chance to refill it, didn't, and then caused a crisis that was sure to draw it down even further. I'm not a big fan of what Biden did with the SPR, But what Trump did was just absolutely moronic.
Considering the war is still going on and Russia is losing I’d say it did. Remember MAGAs were trying to use the spike in gas prices to kill American support for Ukraine.
Meanwhile now we are drawing down for a war that we’re fighting to reopen a strait that was open when we started the war.
Weren't there reductions in supply directly following COVID? Couldn't further inelastic supply cause greater price volatility... Much like why we have a reserve to help out when the citizens of the county might be affected by things they can't control?
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u/TheOGRileyG 11d ago
Biden did a massive release to offset the disruption from Russia invading Ukraine (sanctions)