| 2022 was the most profitable year EVER for America’s publicly listed oil firms[From Adam Tooze's Chartbook] |
As a result of higher prices, 2022 was the most profitable year on record for publicly traded US oil companies.
US oil industry has done vastly under the Biden admin than under Trump
The country’s top-10 listed operators by value amassed a combined net income of $313bn in the first three years of the Biden administration, almost triple the amount in the same period under Trump. Oil and gas production in the US hit record levels in 2023.
And yet the oil lobby hates the Biden admin. It focuses on a mass of regulations that are seen as hostile, even though their impact is largely symbolic rather than commercial.
“One of the great ironies of President Biden’s first term is that he campaigned on a pledge to address climate change and make significant changes to oil and gas policies, yet through this first term, profits and production for these companies have both boomed,” says Andrew Gillick, a managing director at energy consultancy Enverus.
Source: FT
Meanwhile, news of petrol prices dominates America’s economic headlines more than ever before. Once prices hit $3.50 coverage surges.
And rather than rising with prosperity, America’s pain threshold, at least as the media imagine it, has fallen in real terms.
Fox News has used petrol prices as a cudgel against the Biden administration.
The strongest effect of all this is seen with the rightwing Fox News, where the record high pump prices of June 2022 led to almost 80 per cent of programmes mentioning the cost of petrol, compared with about 50 per cent on CNN and MSNBC, and less than 20 per cent on network channels. In light of this it is unsurprising that data from the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey shows Republicans are almost twice as likely as Democrats to say they’ve recently heard unfavourable news about high prices.
Source: FT