Gas Prices Hit $7 In Some U.S. Cities

Watch the interviews with Senators reporting on their Zoom meeting Saturday with Zelensky. They’re incredibly amped up about the idea of outright defeating Russia on the battlefield. They want to be able to say US weapons were the decisive factor. They’re digging in

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) March 7, 2022

Do you live in an American city where gasoline is now $7 a gallon?

If so, you should thank the American foreign policy establishment every time you fill up at the pump. The people who gave us Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan have now delivered this.

New York Magazine:

“If the West’s governments threw Putin a lifeline, however, its private sector is steadily cutting through it.

Over the past few days, Western traders and refineries have slashed their purchases of Russian oil, with some ceasing to transact with the Russians altogether. Meanwhile, oil giants Shell and BP both announced that they are abandoning partnerships with Russian state-owned oil companies and halting extraction projects in the country.

“The enablers of oil exports — the banks, insurance companies, tanker companies and even multinational oil companies — have enacted what amounts to a de facto ban,” Tom Kloza, the global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service, told the New York Times last week.

The motivations behind this emergent boycott vary from firm to firm. For one thing, while Western sanctions include exemptions for the energy trade, executing such transactions without running afoul of some other restriction in the process is a tricky, time-consuming business. Many buyers would simply prefer to do business with less vexsome suppliers. At the same time, some shipping companies do not want to expose their vessels to the risk of attack; shortly after the onset of Putin’s invasion, a missile struck a Moldovan oil tanker.

We’re in unknown territory if you pull 13 percent to 15 percent of global oil out of the pool,” Brenda Shaffer, a senior adviser for energy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told CNBC Thursday. “Sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, it’s not even comparable to what that could do to the global oil market if you actually pulled away most of Russian production.” Shaffer went on to note that while many are cheering the exit of Shell and BP from Russia as a “feel-good moment,” those moves are “going to be a huge, huge shock to the state of these companies and to the stock market in general.” …”

If it feels good, do it, especially if people on Twitter are saying we ought to do it. That’s where all the important decisions are made these days.

The bipartisan consensus in the Senate and on cable television is that we need to cancel Russia and ban Russian oil imports to “do something” that will theoretically help Ukraine in this war. It doesn’t really matter at this point because all the virtue signaling has already created a Russian supply crisis. We’re now in an energy shock for canceling one of the world’s largest oil producers and economies.

Note: The time to “do something” to help Ukraine passed in January and February when this whole situation could have been avoided if Anthony Blinken had ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine and agreed that maintaining its neutrality was in everyone’s interest.