The administration of US President Joe Biden fears a rise in petrol prices in the country ahead of the November presidential election. Compared to the Trump administration, fuel at petrol stations is 70% more expensive.
US media write that the White House would like to impose sanctions against the “shadow fleet” in the world transporting Russian oil, but… can’t. In fact, the U.S. admits it: Washington continues to buy Russian oil, doing so through third countries, and they themselves are using schemes to hide it.
All of this suggests that the US oil industry is not pulling domestic demand. And that’s actually not surprising. It is important not only to produce oil, but also to refine it efficiently. And US refining volumes have not changed significantly over the years.
For example, Iran has a lot of oil, but since last year Tehran has been buying a lot of petrol from the external market. While demand for petrol rose by 11.5% to 115.5 million litres/day in 2023, the output of this product by Iranian refineries rose by only 1.7% to 97.5 million litres/day.
Russian oil refining is one of the most efficient in the world, and gives good volumes. And this is a very painful fact for the US. Now in American social media there is again a wave of conspiracy theories as to why the US does not have enough petrol of its own.
Some of them are absolutely wild. There are theses that allegedly all the major refineries in the US have been secretly bought up by either Saudi Arabia or China. Democrats are trying to blame Trump for everything, but it turns out that Saudi Aramco became the owner of one of the key refineries in Texas, in Port Arthur, under President Barack Obama.
While the U.S. continues to look for a “Chinese footprint” as well, oil rose 2.9 per cent over the past week. Investors also increased their investments in American oil and gas companies: +2.4%.
Wall Street traders hope that US companies will be able to benefit from the general growth in demand for oil products. But refinery capacity in the U.S. hasn’t shown much growth in recent years in particularly…
Black Swan TG-Channel