I read somewhere that America is now producing more crude than we have the ability to efficiently refine. We haven’t built new refineries a few decades now.
I don’t know if that factors into the equation or not. But if true, it would seem logical to assume that having the resource without being able to bring it to market does not affect the demand as much as we need to bring down the price.
One would have assummed post 9/11 that part of the defense strategy would have been to create more refineries just because of the threat of unstability in the ME and of other concerns with oil production. But, I’m not shocked at that. It took several years before we[the prez] would evern lift the executive ban on off shore drilling[2008][Still a federal ban, me thinks].
“We haven’t built new refineries a few decades now.”
Not quite true and US refining capacity has increase over the last few decades.