POLITICO NIGHTLY: Biden’s terrible, no good, very bad gas price problem

 

View in browser   BY CALDER MCHUGH The Marathon Anacortes Oil Refinery, located in Anacortes, Washington. | David Ryder/Getty Images ALL GAS, NO BRAKES — OPEC cutting output. War in Ukraine. Global inflation. The Biden administration publicly clashing with oil companies. Refineries offline in California. All of it has added up to a recent rise in gas prices at the worst possible time for President Joe Biden and his party — less than three weeks before the midterms. The Biden administration has bristled at the idea that they’re making energy decisions based on the political calendar. But they’re well aware that the price of gas correlates pretty directly to Democrats’ approval ratings. “Commodities traders see [rising prices] as a temporary issue,” said Ed Hirs, an economist and Energy Fellow at the University of Houston. “The unfortunate thing for the president is it’s happened right before midterms. That’s just bad luck.” Temporary or not, Biden is trying to pull as many levers as he can to address the situation. The problem is, oil markets are difficult to predict — or influence — because they are driven by a market that moves based on global events and forces outside any one country’s control. “When it comes to global oil markets, who knows?” says Andrew Campbell, the executive director of the Energy Institute at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Still, the president is looking for ways to improve his odds. On Wednesday, Biden released the last of the 180 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that he authorized in March. He’s continued to hammer oil companies for pocketing profits that they could be using to drive their prices down. And he’s asked OPEC leaders — specifically Saudi Arabia — to delay their decision on reducing oil outputs. Tapping into America’s oil reserves may well have helped to keep the problem under control. But whether Biden is explicitly playing politics with the country’s oil reserves — as Republican Sen. John Barrasso accused him of doing — or not, releasing more petroleum likely won’t lead to a big short-term difference at the pump in the next few weeks. “There’s an obvious disconnect between the upstream price [of oil] and the downstream price, the refined products [of gasoline].” Hirs says. So, even though Biden can release more petroleum, or crude, unrefined oil, that doesn’t always directly correlate to a change in price. The amount of petroleum available at any given time is far from the only factor in determining gas prices — other global events can easily disrupt the market. We’ve had to divert oil to our European allies, refineries aren’t producing at the same rate they have in the past, and Russian oil production is down, likely by about a million barrels of oil a day, according to Hirs. “We’re at war, we’re just not shooting right now,” he says. All of this adds up to an unstable oil market and gas prices that are prone to quick and pronounced spikes. “Prices are high due to global events,” according to Campbell. “The thought that any country could impact this global situation seems overly optimistic.” So, should Biden throw up his hands or cross his fingers and hope for the best? Not quite. “In the short term, the main thing that [the administration] should be doing is trying to explain to the public what’s going on,” says Campbell. That explanation might be more effective if it comes from a public-facing energy czar, something the Biden administration currently lacks; Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm has not been a regular and recognizable public face on the issue. “There’s no one visible in the administration that has ever drilled a well,” says Hirs. For now, Biden is stuck in a political thicket. He doesn’t want to overreact to this current spike and slow down his priority of transitioning to the use of more renewable energy. But he likely needs gasoline prices to drop rapidly if he wants his party to retain control of Congress — and thus enable him to pursue a robust agenda for the next two years. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on Twitter at @calder_mchugh .   NEW AND IMPROVED POLITICO APP: Stay up to speed with the newly updated POLITICO mobile app, featuring timely political news, insights and analysis from the best journalists in the business. With a fresh look and improved features, the sleek and navigable design offers a convenient way to access POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Don’t miss out on the app you can rely on for the news you need, reimagined. Already a POLITICO app user? Upgrade today! DOWNLOAD FOR iOS  – DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID .     POLL WATCHER 42 percent The percentage of registered voters who believe that Republicans would do a better job bringing down inflation, compared to 27 percent who believe that Democrats would do a better job, according to a new poll from CNBC . WHO ARE THESE POLLSTERS CALLING? HAVE YOU EVER BEEN CALLED? Sen. Lindsey Graham. | Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images — Federal court rules Georgia prosecutors can force Lindsey Graham to testify: Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s effort to subvert the 2020 election can force Sen. Lindsey Graham to testify before a grand jury investigating his phone calls with top Georgia election officials, a federal appeals court ruled today. A three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the South Carolina Republican’s claim that he is constitutionally immune from such questioning. — Pentagon will pay for service members to travel for abortions: The Pentagon will pay for service members to travel to obtain abortions , in a move the military says will ease the burden on troops who wish to receive reproductive care and are stationed in states where the procedure is no longer legal, the department announced today. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin today directed the Defense Department to establish travel and transportation allowances to ensure service members and their dependents have access, according to a memo. — Trump taps firm to handle his Jan. 6 committee subpoena: Trump has hired a firm to engage with the Jan. 6 select committee on its forthcoming subpoena of him . The firm, The Dhillon Law Group, already represents multiple witnesses who have appeared before the committee, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump ally Seb Gorka and Women for America First co-founder Amy Kremer. A person familiar with the situation said it is now being tasked with negotiating the terms of the Trump subpoena, which the committee voted to issue last week. — Loeffler’ s texts post-2020 election go public, raising new investigative questions: A log of text messages sent and received by former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) during the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack is raising questions about potentially unauthorized access to investigative material relevant to probes of the 2020 election . The messages, reviewed by POLITICO, shed light on Loeffler’s shifting political calculus as she weighed whether to lodge a challenge to the 2020 results at the urging of Trump. She announced she would challenge the results but ultimately decided against it as a violent mob ransacked the Capitol one day after she lost her reelection bid to Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.). —  CDC advisers recommend adding Covid shots to routine immunization schedules for kids, adults: The CDC’s independent vaccine advisers voted 15-0 today to add most Covid-19 vaccines offered in the U.S. to the childhood, adolescent and adult immunization schedules . The immunization schedules, which are updated every fall before going into effect the following year, consolidate all of the CDC’s vaccine recommendations in one document for states that use them as guidance for school entry requirements and busy physicians. The additions formalize recommendations the CDC has already made on Covid vaccination in individuals ages 6 months and older for shots that the FDA has approved or has authorized for emergency use.   LISTEN TO POLITICO'S ENERGY PODCAST: Check out our daily five-minute brief on the latest energy and environmental politics and policy news. Don't miss out on the must-know stories, candid insights, and analysis from POLITICO's energy team. Listen today .     AROUND THE WORLD Liz Truss speaks as she resigns as Prime Minister of the UK. | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images TRUSS FALL — Liz Truss has resigned as U.K. prime minister after a chaotic six weeks in office, saying she “cannot deliver the mandate” on which she was elected, writes Eleni Courea and Matt Honeycombe-Foster . In a short but dramatic televised statement outside No. 10 Downing Street today, Truss admitted she could no longer command the support of her party and that a rapid-fire Conservative leadership election will take place over the next week to choose her successor. Truss’ resignation after just 44 days makes her the shortest-serving prime minister in British history — an extraordinary and unwanted tag she could scarcely have imagined when she was selected as leader by Tory members on September 6. But in less than two months in office she triggered a meltdown in financial markets, sacked two of her most senior ministers, was forced into multiple policy U-turns and ultimately lost the backing of her own MPs. “I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party,” Truss said in her statement today. “I have therefore spoken to his majesty the king to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party.” NIGHTLY NUMBER 80 The number of settlements that could be hit by “rapid flooding” after Russia mined a dam in Southern Ukraine, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The flooding could impact hundreds of thousands of civilians. RADAR SWEEP THE BRITISH ARE COMING — For decades, one of America’s chief exports has been entertainment, specifically of the television and film kind. But now, Americans are increasingly tuning in to British television , which American entertainment companies are trying to recreate or spin-off. From The Crown to Great British Bake Off to Love Island, read Alison Herman in the Ringer about the British Invasion. PARTING WORDS Kanye West in 2020. The rapper is offering to buy right-wing friendly social network Parler after being booted off of Twitter and Instagram. | Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File RAW DEAL — On the afternoon that Parler, a social media platform popular with conservatives, announced its acquisition by Ye, better known as Kanye West, the site emailed hundreds of VIP members to excitedly share the news, writes Meridith McGraw , Jordain Carney and Rebecca Kern . There were just two problems. Parler neglected to blind-CC email addresses and inadvertently revealed the contact information of at least 10 lawmakers and many more conservative stars. The other problem: some of those “VIPs” had no clue why they were being labeled as such, confessing that they had little to no association with the controversial app, let alone special status there. The episode and subsequent confusion — a company spokesperson declined to address questions about who compiled the list and the criteria behind it — has created a headache for Parler during what should have been a celebratory time. Since its 2018 inception, the site has tried to position itself as a champion of free speech, recruiting Trump acolytes and conservative luminaries with a promise to be the quintessential social media counterweight to the likes of Facebook and Twitter. But the misguided email raises questions about how big Parler’s influence actually is as Ye prepares to buy it, given that the VIP list included generic media addresses and some that were old or defunct. It also offers a window into the oft-times chaotic nature of the conservative media ecosystem, where a variety of different platforms are competing for audience share and industry dominance by catering to a narrow group of influential figures and relaxing editorial guardrails. Read all about Parler and Kanye West’s acquisition here. Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here .   Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh Naomi Andu @naomiandu   FOLLOW US

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