The headline is a mid-item paragraph from Oct. 11 Guardian reporting:
Russia and Saudi Arabia to continue oil price pact despite Middle East crisis - Vladimir Putin says withholding oil will ‘most likely’ continue despite Israel-Hamas war pushing crude towards $100 a barrel
Higher global oil prices would provide a windfall for Russia, which has seen sales of gas to Europe plummet after its invasion of Ukraine last year. The rise in crude prices is also expected to frustrate western leaders struggling to contain inflation.
[...] The world’s top two oil exporters met in Moscow on Wednesday to discuss the global market after the surprise attack by Hamas fighters on Israeli civilians over the weekend.
Russia’s deputy prime minister, Alexander Novak, the Kremlin’s top oil official, and the Saudi energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, met in Moscow in advance of Russia’s energy week conference.
Hamas’s surprise attack last weekend ignited a surge in the global benchmark oil price, which rose by almost $4 a barrel, or more than 4%, to $88 as traders speculated that a wider escalation of the conflict across the Middle East could disrupt supplies.
Magid Shenouda, the deputy CEO of the commodity trading giant Mercuria, told an industry conference in the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday [...] “I don’t think there are that many analysts that believed that it was going to go to $100 in a normal circumstance. I think the events that have happened recently put a great cloud [over] where things could go,” Shenouda said.
[...] Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed to withhold a combined 1.3m barrels a day, or more than 1% of global demand, from the market until the end of the year, frustrating world leaders struggling against inflation.
Putin said: “The actions of some of our colleagues, the western elites, have sown confusion on the global energy market, including on the oil market, the negative consequences of such politicised steps affect the entire global economy, now it has to be corrected, and, of course, responsible market participants have to do it.”
Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday it was working with regional and international partners to prevent an escalation of the situation in Gaza and Israel, and reaffirmed that it supported efforts to stabilise oil markets.
Some US pundits have attacked Biden over inflation levels. Over pump prices. The manipulation of crude prices is at fault, not Democrats, not Joe Biden. Climate policy and energy independence goals are not causing inflation. Price manipulation is.
Indeed, price manipulation of crude oil would have a much lessened effect if the US were to more rapidly transition to renewables. Nuclear power would add to global cooling heating [unforced error, now corrected], by its nature, while wind and solar would be more heat neutral.
The sooner, the better. And discerning readers should ignore the bullshit being slung against Biden for "causing" inflation. It is fake news propaganda.
End of story.
UPDATE: Energy costs trickle throughout subsequent pricing, it takes energy to farm, to manufacture, to transport, to make homes comfortable to habitation. Every step of the economy gets its price increase ripple when energy costs are manipulated upward by supply manipulation. To claim otherwise is to deliberately mislead. "Bidenflation" is a total bullshit term. So, look who's using it. Those wanting to sell you a bucketful of lies.
Many words, to say the refiners are not primarily at fault. That is true when crude pricing is manipulated by supply-demand jiggering for a price jump just below the initiation price which would make frackville North Dakota oil competitive again, but no higher. The only handle against that is transitioning to renewables, letting the Russians and Saudis sit on their oil reserves once nobody wants it. Temporarily, Venezuelan and and Iranian oil are outlets of relief, if sanctions are modified. And that is something Biden's administration is aware of, and acting.
Love the sanction, pay more; or let a market adjustment play out by curbing sanctions. Suffer the inflation, or tune policy.
And then - why when crude prices raise pump prices raise proportionately, while all other refinery costs stay constant; and then when crude prices drop, pump prices if dropping at all, drop less, proportionately. The answer seems to lie with refiner supply/demand reality. Concentration of oligopoly refiner choke-point power is a reality, and bully pulpit disclosure of what's going on can only do so much. With Biden using the bully pulpit as best possible.
The Republicans are playing both ends against the middle. Hold tight on sanctions (on these evil nations) while the two key crude producers conspire; and then piss and moan over pump prices and the ripple effect of crude oil price climbings via conspiracy outside of US national power to control. Do not buy that brand of sophistry. It is deception, smoothly packaged. Price gouging, I don't like it either and would like to pay less to gas the car, but I am bright enough to know that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are causing the inflation problem, while only the Republicans are lying about things and obscuring fundamental truth.