It would make more sense for America’s petroleum producers to keep the price under control if not reduce it at the cost of profits until the elections are over. They should have learned from the Democrat Party’s war on their industry that they’re survival is best assured under Republican administration.
The stockholders will whine but it’s better to moderate and insure survival than to piss off your consumers so much that they turn back to the party dedicated to killing your business.
This line that prices are dependent on traffic through the Strait is smoke being blown up everyone’s keisters. We are an exporter that has no dependency on Middle Eastern oil that’s not the result of bad policies.
The tragedy here is our President being coerced to appear surrendering after having just demonstrated why America shouldn’t be fooled with. Bad precedent by who has been a good president.
Oil companies aren’t going to subsidize politicians to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.
Your conclusion that because we export, we have no dependence on global supplies is nonsense, unless we reinstitute the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 which Congress repealed in 2015 as fracked shale crude began to flood the market.