GND is not the cause of increase in oil prices – prices are climbing due to Russian and Saudi Arabian decisions and post-Covid demand

“It’s Not Russia (they supply just 3% of our oil.),” a Facebook user wrote last Wednesday. “It’s’ not the oil companies, It Is the GREEN NEW DEAL regulations. They are lying to us…” But the claim is false. The Green New Deal, which is a sweeping plan backed by some Democrats to address climate change, has not been enacted by the federal government, experts told The Associated Press. “It’s like blaming what’s happening in the world on a boogeyman that doesn’t exist,” said Michael Wara, director of the climate and energy policy program at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “That’s not correct.” The Green New Deal, which originally existed as a nonbinding resolution, called for a “10-year national mobilization” to move the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels and replace them with renewable sources, in March 2019. But the resolution Congress. Wara noted that Build Back Better, President Joe Biden’s roughly $2 trillion spending plan, included provisions that were inspired by the Green New Deal, such as rebates for electric vehicles. However, the spending plan has been stalled in Congress for months. “Build Back Better is the core of the Green New Deal and it has not been enacted into law,” Wara said. Amy Myers Jaffe, a research professor and managing director of the Climate Policy Lab at Tufts University, said that high gas prices are not being caused by other federal climate change-oriented policies, either. There are many reasons gasoline prices have pushed higher. The biggest driver is the price of crude oil, which has been rising over the past year. As more people get on the road after being cooped up during the pandemic, oil and gas suppliers that had scaled back production during the pandemic lull in demand are struggling to keep up. And decisions by the OPEC+ oil cartel, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, to only modestly increase the oil they released to the market kept prices high. Some in the oil and gas industry say that Biden’s policies, including , have discouraged companies from drilling. But in fact, oil and gas drilling has under Biden. Now, companies in the U.S. are ramping up drilling but also dealing with tight supplies of rigs, trucks and labor that they need to supply more oil. Global oil prices have climbed even higher as Russia, a major oil supplier to the world, invaded Ukraine and many buyers Russian crude, reducing the viable global oil supply. “The current spike in gasoline prices is tied to the spike in global crude oil prices. Global crude oil production dropped during COVID and has been relatively slow to recover for a number of reasons, none of which are Green Deal related,” Robert Johnston, an adjunct senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, wrote in an email to the AP. “The key reasons include OPEC production policy, extremely strong demand post-COVID, low inventories, and now the major geopolitical disruption in Russia,” Johnston added.