White House officials are bracing for oil prices to surge past the $150-a-barrel mark as the Iran war stretches into its second month and the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, according to a new report.

In recent weeks, the average cost of a barrel of crude has hovered around $100, a figure that the Trump administration now sees as the new “baseline,” though a potential spike to $200 hasn’t been ruled out, a source familiar with the matter told Politico.

As a result, officials have entered “all hands on deck” mode, urgently evaluating options to tame soaring oil prices — which pushed gas above $4 a gallon this week and risks inflating costs across the broader economy.

  • HulkSmashBurgers@reddthat.com
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    If only in the decades since the oil embargo of the early 1970s we kept investing in alternative energy sources we could have been in a much better place energy wise.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House roof. Reagan took them down. Pretty succinct summary of the past 40 years.

      • The D Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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        before anyone says “those solar panels didn’t work very well” THAT’S NOT THE FUCKING POINT. they represented a commitment to invest in the technology. the presidency is the bully pulpit. a person can change a lot about the direction of the country there without making meaningful change in the moment. Grant and Carter are probably the two presidents who tried the hardest to do something positive with that power

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          Let’s not idolize Carter too much. I like a lot of what he did, and I obviously love his “old man building houses for the needy” golden years, but Carter was also the beginning of the dismantling of antitrust which is the primary reason we have wealth consolidation and market capture as the de facto norm today.

          He started the ball rolling with a bizarre policy of “big businesses are good for everyone” which meant antitrust laws–while still on the books and our official policy–simply stopped being enforced. Regan capitalized on this but Carter started it.

          • The D Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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            23時間前

            oh for sure. and Grant wasn’t great for indioenous people. America has never had a good president. just a limited selection who qualify for “most least worst”

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          Exactly.

          Grant and Carter are probably the two presidents who tried the hardest to do something positive with that power

          I would say both Roosevelts did too. Admittedly, my Grant knowledge isn’t super deep, what was it that he did that you think puts him in that group?

          • The D Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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            he had this crazy idea that the treasury department should give money to poor people and that someone should kick the KKK’s ass

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      Yeah, but windmills cause cancer and solar is basically gay. And EVs - I’m pretty sure if you drive those when you are male, your penis shrivels up, falls off and you grow a vagina.

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    If ONLY Iran would OPEN up the Straight that was ALREADY Open BEFORE Trump bombed them for some Reason! WE wouldn’t be in This Mess! We NEED Trump to Fix Trump’s Fuck Up! Iran!

    -NOT Sheep Republicans!

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    Oh hey, maybe if they didn’t dismantle all the green energy and EV initiatives then the impacts would be mitigated a little bit…

    Funny how that works…

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          I think about this. Functionally he’s a puppet of Putin, but I don’t think that it’s an “active” stooging. Trump wants to BE a dictator and Putin is very intelligent, so he’s able to ply Trump to his will. Trump probably cares more about the pee-tapes than it’d actually affect him.

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      Automakers have billions of dollars in brand new EV manufacturing equipment and lines sitting around doing nothing since the new administration changed all the regulations and incentives.

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        they’re also putting some new programs on hold, so at least they’re not all outright cancelled yet

        but oh boy have a lot been cancelled. we built a huge cell that was shipped to the customer and scrapped the next year. the customer actually ended up taking apart the tools we built and shipping us back a bunch of the components to build them another cell for a different project. that was neat.

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          Gotta subsidise the undead oil economy or else the old farts might actually have to read a journal and try to figure where else to invest the money they don’t need!

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    It honestly makes me sick that this appears to be the line for most Americans. Fuck this country.

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      When people are struggling to get by and exhausted from the news, they end up focusing on themselves. The reality is most Americans don’t have the energy, time, or resources to focus on something that’s disconnected from their lives - including attrocities on the other side of the planet.

      But gas prices hit HARD. When you’re spending 20-30% of your income on gas and the price of that gas doubles, it’s a problem even before it makes everything else skyrocket in price.

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        That excuse is honestly not acceptable. Americans have had ample time and opportunity to consider the impact of their voting decisions. This is their choice. Collectively, the country has failed.

        Too ignorant, selfish, or stupid.

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      To be fair, once fuel prices go up the cost of EVERYTHING also goes up. So no it’s not just about pain at the pump, it’s pain at the grocery check out. Pain when the oil truck comes to deliver your liquid heat. Pain when you buy anything plastic, anything grown with fertilizers. People don’t realize petroleum is in almost everything! And if it doesn’t use a petroleum product in manufacturing, it certainly does in shipping.

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        Youre right, but also if we weren’t using up as much for fuel as we do there would be much more left for other applications

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          No kidding. I think our world leaders have forgotten that there is only so much oil in the ground, once it’s all burnt up that’s it poof it’s gone. Makes it even more insane that their bombing oil fields and refineries. If u want a small example of how our billionaire rulers have boned us look at the racket from synthetic rope getting hemp banned. The tldr is DuPont made synthetic rope, but hemp which is sustainable and strong got outlawed due in part to them lobbying. We have a government that exists only to stuff rich peoples pockets from what it seems. There’s more examples than can be listed of private corporations creating rules to make themselves the winners at the expense of the people and the planet, and it’s been going on for over a hundred years and just getting exponentially worse. There’s a reason wealth just keeps consolidating.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        Exactly. Your house could be solar, you could be charging your EV from your solar, and so your house power and transportation costs mostly negated, but everything else would still have an increase.

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          I’m in northern New England, moved here from Southern New England. Moved there from Texas. Moved there from Italy. I’m not “from” anywhere so I picked up some odd sayings in my travels LOL. I also make stupid shit up on occasion, gotta keep people on their toes.

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          Yep and the same cart of groceries I spent 100 bucks on last year is about 200 now :( Trump was right. So much winning we’ll get sick of it. Trouble is only the billionaires are winning, at our expense. I’m not having fun anymore.

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      No one cares about victims of rape and pedophilia, that’s other people, caring about other people is un-American.

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      The only thing that keeps most people complacent is they can manage to scrape by with their meager salary buying crappy goods. Take that away and Americans might get more revolutionary.

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    They’re gonna nationalize our oil aren’t they? Required sale to the government at a set rate and then government will turn around and sell into the domestic and international markets to balance prices at our pumps.

    It’s about the only option other than stop bombing Iran and that’s not happening.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        Oh Undoubtedly. I look forward to all the explanations as to why it’s Capitalism when we do it and Socialism when Venezuela does it.

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        That would bring the price of gas down here.

        I’m doubtful of that. Oil is a globalized commodity, and international prices will still affect local sales, even if none of our oil actually comes through the strait of Hormuz.

        I’m convinced the strait being closed is the whole point of this mess. It’s just an excuse to charge more despite local production costs not changing. If export were banned, I think they’d just lower production to keep their margins high.

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          The point is that banning the export of US oil would cause oil to stop being a globalized commodity (in the US.) US production and US consumption have not changed since the Iran war started. But US prices are up since US production is being shipped to places where their supply from Hormuz is cut off.

          Other responder said that US refining can’t refine US oil, which would be extremely odd and I hadn’t heard that before but if true would indeed destroy my logic here.

      • Bassman1805@lemmy.world
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        The oil refineries we have in the US attention equipped to handle the type of oil we can actually produce here. We export just about all of our oil, and just about all of our oil product are refined from foreign oil.

        If we didn’t export US oil, we wouldn’t be able to do much with it.

        • TehWorld@lemmy.world
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          I’m nowhere near an expert, but that’s solely a cost issue. We certainly have the tech and the oil companies would be happy to retool with taxpayer dollars. What’s another trillion or three between friends?

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            It’s not just cost, but also time. This issue is quite a pressing concern, I am no expert but from what I’ve read they can’t quickly retool for a different type of oil, it would be a longer term kind of thing, not fast enough for the current crisis

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    I really want to see Iran say they’ll reopen it only after trump is personally handed over to stand trial for his war crimes…

    It will never work, but it’ll fracture his support and more importantly he’ll be ome convinced it’s gonna happen and start turning on his own cronies even if they’re loyal.

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        Except it’s going to devastate a lot of people financially who don’t deserve it. So ireally don’t find it funny.

        But if gas hits that high it will devastate rural areas and the people who voted for this

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          30% of the American public voted for these grifting idiots, not just the president, but his enablers too. This slightly disproportionately affects rural areas. We should be getting off of gas and investing in green energy anyway.

          I choose to laugh. It’s better than what the people of Iran got out of it.

          Man, I wonder if a better president would have come up with some kind of treaty to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

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            How many times has iran been attacked for being two weeks away from nuclear weapons in the past 50 years?

            What are the chances these are all true?

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              in last 40 years, there were 2000 weeks. 1998/2000 or 99.9% of weeks this statement was proven false.

              • Count042@lemmy.ml
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                It was not. Iran’s military wanted to stay close so that if the religious fatwa the ayatollah pronounced against acquiring nuclear weapons, they’re have one quickly.

                Yes, Trump murdered the one man responsible for preventing Iran from having nuclear weapons, and control went to his son who just saw every direct member of his family murdered in front of him.

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              While that’s true, it doesn’t really contribute to the conversation or the problem at hand.

              Are you implying that because the US has nuclear weapons that you’d like Iran to have them too? Because that’s the only way I can relate this back.

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                I’m thinking Trump murdered the one man responsible for the IRGC not acquiring nuclear weapons.

                You know, the Ayatollah with the fatwa against acquiring nuclear weapons.

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                Remember those weapons over which US&A started the war in Iraq? They’ve probably existed as much as theirs in Iran. I don’t believe I’ve seen Iran attack anyone before it was attacked. US&A on the other hand…

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                  I think you missed the point, which is that I think the way to handle this was Obama’s treaty before Trump dismantled it because it was an Obama accomplishment.

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          Who is it going to financially devastate? Most Americans have no investments, no savings, and no retirement. 10,000% inflation is almost as hard to deal with as 50% for people living paycheck to paycheck already. For the investors/ruling class, a free falling dollar does a lot more damage.

        • wildncrazyguy138@fedia.io
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          Pay the piper now or pay him later when the earth rises 2C over global average due to no one changing their habits.

          Idle hands are the devil’s playground.

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    One idiotic move administration has made is to increase ethanol content of gasoline. Ethanol is corn based in US. Cost of corn is fertilizer based. The futures price of corn has only increased about 10%, while fertilizer costs are up 100%, and so no logical reason to plant corn that has been losing money for farmers for last 5 years.

    Easiest plan to bring down energy prices would be to import chinese solar tariff free, to use on ethanol corn fields in Nebraska. Leaving room for Corn between panel rows when it is viable to grow corn for food again. There’s even a path towards 0 cost electricity for 24/7 datacenters or other loads. https://lemmy.ca/post/59615557?scrollToComments=true

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      Your linked AI slop post has a LOT of assumptions and it’s kinda expensive. If the total system capex is 50k for 1 kW load, it’ll be 500 million for a modern 10MW data center. Then covering the deficit off employee BEVs for peanuts a kWh: That assumes you have enough employees for that and that they’re willing to wear their batteries for this.

      But yes, the whole ethanol requirement is stupid for a country that has its own oil anyway

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        You’re right about cost assumptions of renewables. Like I said, tariff free Chinese costs + 30% local premium results in 0 electricity costs if $2/kg hydrogen revenue. Higher costs would still pay off at 10c/kwh from datacenter/other sales.

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      They are bracing for the voters to finally turn on them. Commit fraud? It’s fine my gas is cheap. Sex with children? Eh whatever I don’t want to consider if that’s true or not as long as my gas is cheap. Bomb a school overseas? Whatever you’ve gotta do to keep my gas cheap. GAS PRICES ARE UP?! WTF IS THIS ADMINISTRATION DOING?! VOTE THEM OUT.

      It’s sickening, but it seems the price of gas is really all that matters to the Republican voter.

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        This country has done nothing except wait for someone else to solve the “trump problem.” Protests are great to show unity and dissatisfaction, but I don’t think the regime cares. Protests are not force, and the only thing, if it isn’t obvious, this administration understands is abuse and use of force. They’d probably be fine with a Tiananmen Square scenario in the US, it would justify the final grab for power.

        That said, I hope you’re right and gas is finally enough to force change. Hopefully we don’t replace one idiot with another.

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    The only big difference between Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump is that Hitler didn’t sexually abuse children.

    Comparisons:

    • never drinks alcohol
    • tariff war which is worst for themselves
    • oil shortages by bad planning
    • declaring wars
    • stealing Nobel peace prize (was Goebbles, but whatever)
    • fucking up the economy
    • started a world war
    • is senile AF
    • blames minorities for everything
    • wants to get rid of minorities by any means necessary
    • doesn’t care about rules or laws, human rights or war crimes
    • wants to build megalomaniac buildings
    • only recognizes self appointed judges
    • builds a close circle of radicalized idiots around him who can’t say no to him
    • empoweres criminal enterprises, surrounds himself with and protects criminals, steals from the poor, creates a regime enriching itself illegally

    Should I continue?