i just now saw these from last friday. i was caught up in baseball and the track teams choking so i missed them at the time.
anyone that actually believes that joe biden being the president as opposed to anyone else being president is driving the change in oil and gas commodity prices is utterly ignorant of how the O&G markets work. of course the president's actions in terms of international relations inherently have an impact but joe biden did not invade ukraine. russia did. and the consequence of that was isolating the second largest natural gas producer and the third largest oil producer in the world from the international marketplace. but that wasn't some sort of anti-producer policy that only some far left wingnut president would have pursued. that is a coordinated international effort from most of the first world to punish a country for nakedly invading another sovereign nation. there is no doubt that eliminating that supply is shifting the clearing equilibrium but regardless of president (well, maybe one), this would have been the outcome regardless. if your position is that we should not attempt to severely punish russia by mitigating its financial prosperity from being a petrostate for its adventurism, then that is a different conversation but i don't think joe biden is somehow unique in that outcome. so right there is a massive, negative supply shock on the global markets that isn't driven by some sort of biden agenda item. it's simply a consequence of market dynamics.
there are no domestic policies that have been entered into to discourage domestic production in the last year. prices haven't skyrocketed because something changed in federal permitting or regulations. prices have skyrocketed because of the aforementioned as well as increasing global demand emerging from the 2020 experience. when the price dropped to uneconomic for a lot of marginal producers, a lot of shit was shut in. it takes time to get those going again. there are thousands of leases with billions in economic reserves (particularly at current prices) under federal leases that are undeveloped in which no policy is stopping that development. and frankly, that's a distraction anyway as most U.S. production occurs on private lands with private leases. ONRR approved more leases last year than in Trump's years. someone please show me these domestic policies discouraging production beyond a bunch of vague, politically motivated bullshit.
E&P has been painfully, PAINFULLY living through a sustained low-price environment since late 2014 and capital deployment is not super agile amongst the supermajors and majors. field services is ramping up for sure and we will start seeing increased supply but there is certainly caution given the exogenous variable that is driving a lot of this price insanity (russia) is outside their control. they have their development plans and drilling schedules and it takes time to make large movements and time for long-term hedges to expire, etc... capital discipline is the driver here but prices are such that this will have a diminished impact moving forward if these prices remain for any sustained period.
thanksgiving 2014, the prices for natural gas and oil both plummeted because of a meeting vienna that had nothing to do with the united states. it had to do with opec informally declaring war on russia...who had informally declared war on u.s. shale independent producers. per barrel went down from $100 to $30 in mere days. i suppose barack obama was somehow responsible for that with his well-known O&G loving, production encouraging policies?
summer 2005 and summer 2008, natural gas hits $16 (the highest ever since deregulation in the late 1980's) and oil is roaring at $135. is that because W suddenly decided to impose a bunch of anti-O&G development domestic policies? give me a fucking break.
O&G commodities markets are some of the more efficient markets out there and is largely unregulated from an economic perspective.
so just like the morons who decry the producers for "gouging" when prices are high (i am literally engaged on a matter right now in which the supers are idiotically being accused of antitrust collusion to stop producing in order to achieve this price explosion) as if the producers have the market power to set the overall prices, it is similarly stupid to state that who the president is who is responsible for O&G market dynamics outside of just being the face of the nation who engages in international relations (such as imposing bans on russian imports or negotiating with saudi arabia and the rest of opec).