Scroll down a bit in this wrap-up of last weekend’s G8 Summit from The Hill newspaper, and you’ll see that the president and other G8 leaders hinted that they might ask for a draw on the world’s oil reserves to offset disruptions in supply from Iran. Their statement:

“There have been increasing disruptions in the supply of oil to the global market over the past several months, which pose a substantial risk to global economic growth. … Looking ahead to the likelihood of further disruptions in oil sales and the expected increased demand over the coming months, we are monitoring the situation closely and stand ready to call upon the International Energy Agency to take appropriate action to ensure that the market is fully and timely supplied."

The Hill says the White House was mum on... more »

There has been a lot of good analysis of the president’s latest pursuit of alleged manipulation in the oil trading markets. The Council on Foreign Relations’ Blake Clayton makes a number of good points here, and energy blogger Robert Rapier notes the two-way risk inherent in commodities trading, here.

What’s clear is that the president’s concern isn’t new (see 2008, 2009 and 2011), and that White House officials had trouble connecting today’s announcement with anything substantive, as can be seen in a succession of tweets by Yahoo! News’ White House correspondent, Olivier Knox:

“White House punts on whether today's Pres Obama announcement re: oil speculation would have any impact on gas prices. (cont’d)”

“(cont'd) "We would leave that to outside analysts to disentangle,” senio... more »

Opponents of increased domestic oil production like to portray the U.S. as being helpless in the face of worldwide events.  This argument sometimes takes this form:

… with only 2% of the world’s oil reserves, we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices – not when consume 20% of the world’s oil.

Which we dealt with here, and sometimes like this:

…oil prices are dictated by the vast world market, of which U.S. production is just a small fraction.

or this:

This notion that a politician can wave a magic wand and impact the 90-million-barrel-a-day global oil market is preposterous…

While it is good to see supply and demand being mentioned when discussing oil, the U.S. is hardly a feeble little victim unable to affect the market.

In 2010, according to the EIA, the... more »

Fact-checking the president’s energy rhetoric: See API’s new point-by-point look at some of the energy assertions the president has made in his State of the Union address and other public statements. For example:

President: “I’m directing my administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas reserves.”

Fact: The administration is defining the status quo as progress. The resources identified are restricted to areas in the Gulf of Mexico and the Alaska OCS that have already been leased and where the industry is already active. In fact, the administration’s latest plan for offshore development scales back on the previous plan by removing the Eastern Gulf of Mexico and areas in the Atlantic. The 75 percent number is deceiving because it includes only the ar... more »

Interesting analysis by The Barrel's John Kingston on last week's decision to release 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

Kingston writes that the 1 million barrels per day (b/d) to be released from the reserve over a 30-day period is approximately equal to government estimates of the daily yield from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) - if, in fact, the government ever permitted oil and natural gas development there. He asks:

"So the question is if foes of ANWR drilling like President Obama, Sen. Charles Schumer (Democrat-New York) and Rep. Edward Markey (Democrat-Massachusetts) think an SPR release of 1 million b/d is going to impact markets, which they made clear (last week), why have they consistently dismissed the potential market impact of fl... more »