Johnny Appleseed is Plastering “It’s Joe Biden’s Fault” Stickers at the Gas Pump: A Liberal/Conservative Mindset Doesn't Help to Understand the Issue of High Gas Prices
American Eclectic
October 15, 2022
Until recently, I drove my F-250 truck which uses diesel not regular gas towing a 16,000-pound fifth wheel RV. At one point I was paying as high as $6.00 for a gallon and the price has come down to (give or take), $4.65—$4.95 (depending on the state), but gas and diesel prices are still high (and are probably going up again)—diesel is more expensive than regular gas. Beginning around February, I started seeing little round stickers placed on gas pumps that said, “It’s Joe Biden’s fault your gas is high.” A different version with the same message is a picture of Biden pointing. When stuck on a gas pump, Biden is shown pointing at where the price appears and the sticker says, “That’s all me. I did that.” I would say I saw about thirty of these little stickers, maybe more. Since towing eight tons eats up diesel quickly, I stopped frequently at gas stations, certainly more than regular drivers, as a result I’d seen a lot of these stickers. I figure I’d seen stickers in at least seven different states.
I know that one day President Biden did not suddenly decide to raise gas prices because he knew that’s what would make him popular. That doesn’t matter. Thinking it through that Biden might play a small role, but not a significant one for gas and diesel going through the roof doesn’t matter to people who want to believe it—and probably believed it before they saw the same stickers I have seen.
On the one hand there is a mystery (it appears to be) of how exactly gas prices go up and down and on the other hand there is the outsized belief that a President has such a vast amount of power he can arbitrarily, all on his own, raise gas prices. What else can he do with this power, all, apparently, done with the intention to make things painful for the people whose votes he wants? An ABC news segment in May on Good Morning America, which lasted slightly more than one minute and included a rather excited, emotional reporter, stressed, with the aid of graphic presentation that gas had gone from $3.04 a gallon a year prior to that May segment to $4.59 at that point. Information presented on the useless level—a factoid since it is questionable what viewers took away from this segment. A TV reporter who probably has no substantive knowledge about the topic he was all excited to briefly explain.
Johnny Appleseed was a real person named John Chapman (1774-1845). The image of Johnny Appleseed just randomly wandering the country, planting apple seeds gets to peoples’ imagination and sounds better than the fact that he created nurseries and fenced them in to protect his growing trees from wandering livestock. The updated version of Johnny Appleseed as an apparently disgruntled individual who has focused on Biden as the culprit for high gas prices doesn’t quite fit the original myth. Probably there is not one person going around putting these stickers on gas pumps but a lot of people. I must assume they honestly believe the nonsense on the sticker. In the case of these people, I strongly suspect they were just waiting for the opportunity to jump on Biden about something. If gas prices had not taken off like a rocket, they would have found something else to blame on Biden.
It is true that prior to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, gas prices had gone up. In 2021, Biden’s first year as President, the average gas price was $2.25 at the start of his Presidency, ending the year with about one dollar higher per gallon. 2021, started to show that driving was increasing after the pandemic had led to a significant reduction in 2020. One measure of a significant drop in driving could be seen by OPEC’s crude oil production going from 32.11 million barrels per day in April 2020 down to 24.25 million in June, just two months later (although in August 2022, a group known as OPEC Plus agreed to a small increase in oil production)—well, maybe they did and maybe they did not. Biden thought he got OPEC to agree to an increase in production. But earlier this month it was announced OPEC would cut production by two million barrels a day, which will, no doubt, have an impact on driving the price of gas up. The International Energy Agency (IAE) expects the demand for oil to grow but less than originally expected over the near-term future. The revision is due to China seeing a demand for oil falling by 420,000 barrels per day (bpd). By the end of this year, figures might show that Chinese demand fell for the first time since 1990, due to Covid restrictions imposed on the country. At some point Chinese oil demand will go back up, which will affect oil prices everywhere. I wonder, however, whether this cut in China oil use partially influenced OPEC’s decision to cut production.
Complicating the OPEC decision to cut production, is that Saudi Arabia supports Russia in the war in the Ukraine and an OPEC cut in production will help Russia in its oil sales which will generate needed revenue for them to continue, if not ramp up, their military actions in the Ukraine. Higher oil prices mean more revenue for Russia, second in the world regarding oil exports (behind Saudi Arabia with the United States as third). Relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia were already cool, this oil cut decision will only make the relationship worse. Whatever influence the United States might have thought it had on Saudi Arabia, may have disappeared.
One indication of gas prices going up was seen in the increase in driving in 2021, with an 18.4% surge in vehicle crashes in the first six months of 2021, as people started hitting the road again. 2020 had seen a steady decline in vehicle miles which led to a decline in shopping trips and an increase in working from home. It was inevitable as the country moved away from the pandemic, although it hovers all around us with continued high numbers of Covid infections and deaths, that the demand for gas would go up and, inevitably, the price of gas would increase.
Oil refineries is another issue associated with gas prices: There were 137 operating in 2017, by 2022 there were 125. There might be something here to put some blame on a push to move away from a reliance on fossil fuels. As a Washington Post article stated:
Oil refineries across the country are being retired and converted to other uses as owners balk at making costly upgrades and America’s pivot away from fossil fuels leaves their future uncertain. The downsizing comes despite painfully high gasoline prices and as demand globally ramps up amid sanctions on gasoline and diesel produced in Russia, the third-biggest petroleum refiner in the world, behind the United States and China.
Between 2019 and 2021, operating oil refineries went from 132 to 124, a significant drop which reduced refining capacity by about 5 percent. (*) It is true companies are seeing record profits with oil prices up, but the incentive to add refineries may not be there as they see the possibility of short-lived high profits. Refineries account for about 17 percent of the price for gas and about 28 percent for the price of diesel. The CEO of Chevron stated that he believed no new oil refineries will be built in the United States.
Supporters of the “It’s Biden’s fault” sometimes point to the Keystone Pipeline as either the reason or a primary reason that gas prices have gone up. In typical superficial thinking fashion, it’s easy to point here and blame Biden for gas prices. This project was originally proposed in 2005 by a Canadian corporation. Four of the five phases have been completed, it was the fifth phase that Biden stopped, after former President Trump allowed it, although former President Obama before him had delayed it. It may be easier to say “five phases” although phase three had a part a and part b, so the phase Biden stopped was really phase four. For the “It’s Biden’s fault” thinkers, that phase four would have been built through a wetlands region in the Sandhills of Nebraska and that really did not register with them. Wetlands are important for water quality, and they can help regulate climate by reducing greenhouse gases through the process of packing in carbon dioxide and discharging oxygen. The loss of wetlands was explained in one piece, which addressed a report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS):
[T]he good news is that, at least until recently, the overall state of the nation's wetlands had been improving. The bad news, however, is that every year we are still losing more than 80,000 acres of wetlands. …The really bad news is that wetland loss has likely accelerated, and we are on the verge of having to watch wetlands disappear from the landscape much more rapidly.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture report noted that by 1984 over 50 percent of all wetlands in the United States had been drained and used for development or agriculture.
Keystone’s pipelines seem to have a poor track record of preventing leaks, which would do wonders to the wetlands. The Sandhills could matter to water futures in the West. As one report stated:
As fresh water continues to become more and more scarce and valuable to the world, pressure will increase to draw water from places of abundance, including the Nebraska Sandhills. Already, proposals are being bandied about to capture and transport water from the Sandhills to human population centers or to help cover irrigation water shortages in far away places. The water in the Sandhills already contributes to society by helping to grow forage for one of the most important livestock production regions in the world and supplying water to downstream sources where it is used for irrigation, drinking water, navigation, and recreation.
A General Accountability Office (GAO) report released in July 2021 stated, “Keystone’s accident history has been similar to other crude oil pipelines since 2010, but the severity of spills has worsened in recent years.” The Keystone pipeline runs 2,687 miles from Canada to refineries in Illinois, Oklahoma, and Texas. Since 2010, when the pipeline began operating, more than three billion barrels of crude oil have been sent to these refineries. We can assume that if Trump runs again in 2024, he will raise the issue of the Keystone pipeline and create the illusion that by allowing a pipeline through the wetlands, that U.S. gas prices will fall dramatically—he always likes simple cause and effect even if it is not true.
OPEC basket prices have an impact on oil prices everywhere. In 2016, the year Donald Trump was elected President, the average annual OPEC basket price for a barrel was $40.76, rising to $52.43 in 2017, and rising again to $69.78 in 2018, falling to $64.04 in 2019, and falling farther to $41.47 in 2020. In the case of Joe Biden, in 2021, prices rose to $69.89 and to $103.91 in 2022. During 2022, the OPEC basket price, however, fell reaching $94. 02 by the end of September. No doubt the fall in the basket price, perhaps in addition to China’s reduction in oil consumption, both contributed to OPEC stating that the production of oil would be cut.
OPEC countries produce about 40 percent of the global crude oil and as the U.S. Energy Information Administration stated:
OPEC's oil exports represent about 60 percent of the total petroleum traded internationally. Because of this market share, OPEC's actions can, and do, influence international oil prices. In particular, indications of changes in crude oil production from Saudi Arabia, OPEC's largest producer, frequently affect oil prices.
It is true that the field production of crude oil in the United States rose while Trump was President, but it also fell. In the first week of January 2017, 8,946 barrels were produced, rising to 13,000 barrels in the first week of February 2020, but then fell to 10,000 barrels in the first week of September that year, rising to 11,000 barrels in the first week of January 2021, Biden’s first month as President. By the first week in September 2022, oil production had risen to 12,100 barrels.
Gas prices in the United States appear to have gone up or down with some relationship to the data presented above but not completely. In November 2016, the month Trump was elected President, the average price for gas was $2.40 a gallon, by May 2018, almost hallway through his term in office it had risen to just under $3.00 a gallon, but by April 2020 had fallen to just under $2.00 a gallon. The increase in the price per gallon can be seen after that rising to $2.28 a gallon by Trump’s last month as President and rising to $3.40 by the end of Biden’s first year as President.
Offshore drilling might aid in bringing gas prices down. The U.S. Interior Department began auctioning leases in the Gulf of Mexico covering twice the size of Florida in November 2021. Besides the issue of what this might mean to global warming, don’t expect to see any oil for 4-10 years, it all depends on the depth of the drilling out there in the Gulf of Mexico. Biden did campaign on a promise to cut fossil fuels taken from public land, but a lawsuit brought by states with Republicans in charge led to the auction going forward. American government is a very fragmented system with Presidents not always getting what they pledge to do. Eventually, gas prices might come down—just might but nothing is certain. But a scientist stated regarding the Faustian bargain:
The math is extremely simple on this kind of stuff. If new leases expand the global oil supply, that has a proportional effect on emissions from burning oil. Therefore, giving out these leases in the Gulf of Mexico would be increasing global emissions.
Biden’s record on leasing federal government land for oil and gas drilling puts him down there with former President Harry Truman—and under Truman offshore drilling was just getting off the ground. While Trump leased 4.4 million acres for drilling (putting him below the amount of acreage leased by every President before him except Richard Nixon, during their first nineteen months in office), Biden leased only 0.13 million acres. But things need to be understood in a broader context.
In March Biden stated:
In the United States, 90 percent of onshore oil production takes place on land that isn’t owned by the federal government. And of the remaining 10 percent that occurs on federal land, the oil and gas industry has millions of acres leased. They have 9,000 permits to drill now. They could be drilling right now, yesterday, last week, last year. They have 9,000 to drill onshore that are already approved.
An operations manager of an energy company based in Midland, Texas, agreed with the 90 percent figure noting that federal land is “a very small fraction of the total amount of acreage out there.” This individual doesn’t like the tone of the Biden Administration toward oil drilling, but a journalist noted, “that changing the tone in Washington won’t get him the steel pipe, sand and workers he needs for his rigs.”
Sure, I want my diesel price tag to go down. Filling my tank and pulling a 16,000-pound RV and seeing that gas gauge go down quickly is not enjoyable. Wanting lower diesel prices and knowing that whatever happens with the Keystone Pipeline, if anything more, and any other developments, such as OPEC dramatically increasing crude oil production (which will probably not happen), or OPEC dropping prices on a barrel of oil significantly, or the construction of new oil refineries (which would take years, if even started), or a sudden increase in government land leased for oil drilling (and unrealistically expecting oil to just start gushing out of the ground soon after) will not suddenly reduce the pain to my pocketbook.
Part of the problem with the Johnny Appleseed crowd running around putting stickers on gas pumps is they probably assume change can happen quickly. Well, maybe change can happen quickly if we go back to the driving patterns of 2020. Political opinion is often filled with the irrational, the illogical, and those stickers reflect that with, unfortunately, too many people believing in simple political thinking: Cause and effect, it’s Joe’s fault. Living in the ideological bubble of believing that the only way to look at the world around us is through some liberal versus conservative perspective, very entertaining for cable TV news, does nothing but rot your brain when it comes to struggling with how to understand complex issues with no easy solutions. The issue of high gas prices tends to lend itself to inclusion in the ideological spat with a clear culprit present on the conservative side: Joe Biden. Ideologues demand to know who caused them wrong and want to point to a savior. Too much political discussion in this country centers on trying to fit any issue into a liberal/conservative mindset. Since ideology tends to support the belief that quick and easy solutions exist, along with identifiable culprits, frustration accompanies not solving and relieving the issue quickly leading to the distance between ideologues only widening.
(*) Notice there were 124 operating oil refineries in 2021, then 125 in 2022. The data shows 129 “operatable refineries” in 2021 and 130 in 2022. Probably one refinery that was off-line for whatever reason was back and operating in 2022.
Notes
Associated Press, “Coming Off Climate Talks, US to Sell Gulf Oil, Gas Reserves,” VOA (November 16, 2021): https://www.voanews.com/a/coming-off-climate-talks-us-to-sell-gulf-oil-gas-reserves-/6316428.html
Average annual OPEC crude oil price from 1960 to 2022: http:// www.statista.com/statistics/262858/change-in-opec-crude-oil-prices-since-1960/
Matthew DiLallo, “Chevron’s CEO Says No More U.S. Oil Refineries. What Should Energy Investors Do?” The Motley Fool (June 5, 2022): https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/06/05/chevrons-ceo-says-no-more-us-oil-refineries-what-s/
Energy & Financial Markets: What Drives Crude Oil Price? An Analysis of 7 Factors that influence oil markets, with chart data updated monthly and quarterly, eia: U.S. Energy Information Administration: https:// www.eia.gov/finance/markets/crudeoil/supply-opec.php
Evan Harper, “Oil Refineries are making a windfall. Why do they keep closing?” Washington Post (June 20, 2022): https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/20/refineries-profit-gas-prices/
“Half of all wetlands destroyed since 1900, report says,” Phys.org (October 17, 2022): https://phys.org/news/2012-10-wetlands.html
Chris Helzer, “The Value of the Water in the Nebraska Sandhills,” The Prairie Ecologist (September 12, 2016): https://prairieecologist.com/2016/09/12/the-value-of-the-water-in-the-nebraska-sandhills/
OPEN Basket Price: https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/data_graphs/40.htm
Tsvetana Paraskova, “IEA Cuts Oil Demand Forecast As China’s Covid Crisis Continues,” OilPrice.com (September 14, 2022): https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/IEA-Cuts-Oil-Demand-Forecast-As-Chinas-Covid-Crisis-Continues.html
“Petroleum & Other Liquids, Number and Capacity of Petroleum Refineries,” eia: Independent Statistics & Analysis, U.S. Energy Information Administration: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_cap1_dcu_nus_a.htm
“Pipeline Safety: Information on Keystone Accidents and DOT Oversight,” U.S. Government Accountability Report, GAO-21-588 (July 22, 2021): https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-588
Remarks by President Biden Announcing U.S. Ban on Imports of Russian Oil, Liquefied Natural Gas, and Coal,” (March 8, 2022): https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/03/08/remarks-by-president-biden-announcing-u-s-ban-on-imports-of-russian-oil-liquefied-natural-gas-and-coal/
Alison Rogerson, “Status and Trends: Wetland Losses 2007-2017,” WMAP Blog: The Official Blog of the Wetlands Monitoring & Assessment Program, Delaware (December 14, 2021): https://wmap.blogs.delaware.gov/2021/12/14/status-and-trends-wetland-losses-2007-2017/
“USDOT Releases New Data Showing That Road Fatalities Spiked in First Half of 2021,” United States Department of Transportation, NHTSA (October 28, 2021): https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/usdot-releases-new-data-showing-road-fatalities-spiked-first-half-2021
Andy Uhler, “Why aren’t oil companies drilling on their 9,000 land leases?” Marketplace (August 1, 2022): https://www.marketplace.org/2022/08/01/why-arent-oil-companies-drilling-on-their-9000-land-leases/
U.S. All Grades All Formulations Retail Gasoline Prices, eia: U.S. Energy Information Administration: https:// www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=emm_epm0_pte_nus_dpg&f=m
Scott Yaich, “Crisis for America’s Wetlands,” Ducks Unlimited (no date): https://www.ducks.org/Conservation/Waterfowl-Habitat/Crisis-for-Americas-Wetlands
“Wetlands,” USDA: National Resources Conservative Service, United States Department of Agriculture (no date): https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/national/water/wetlands/