FRANK BERNHEISEL

GASOLINE HYSTERIA

Today is Sunday and Kathy and I spent a good deal of the morning enjoying a nice breakfast and the Sunday papers, the New York Times and the Washington Post. This morning both papers added to the hysteria about high gas prices that we have been hearing about all week on radio (yes, I still listen to radio), the internet and TV.

If they all are not blaming President Biden directly, they imply that is the case. Some people are direct in their blame, example: Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio blamed Biden for the rising prices in gas in a tweet Monday, noting that the average gas price increased by 86 cents per gallon from June 2020 to June 2021 and pointed at "President Biden's economy!" to explain the difference in cost.

Kathy used to work at the Energy Information Agency (EIA), which track all kinds of energy data including gas and oil prices and publishes comprehensive reports on each type. This data and these reports are available on their website. https://www.eia.gov/ There is more information there than any of us want to spend the time to absorb. However, the headline of the lead article today is: "EIA expects high refinery margins to contribute to increasing fuel production this summer". This ties into the recommended video below.

Periodically Kathy gets together with a number of women from EIA who were and are the backbone of EIA and key to producing the data and report. In this week's get together, Stacy, who is still working at EIA, mentioned that this video https://youtu.be/QnBqAzJXVGo presents a good summery of pricing in the oil and gasoline industry, and it is funny.

Worth the time, 23 minutes (it has a button to skip the ads) to watch.