Despite calling for higher prices for years, we’re supposed to believe that progressives had a recent epiphany or at least that’s what they would like you to think if you happen to have the memory of a gold fish.
In one of those ironies that so frequently seem to define the modern world, Yahoo Finance was extremely worried about the price of oil on February 26, 2026, but since this was two days before President Donald Trump’s unprecedented decision to attack Iran, the concern was that prices were too low instead of too high. Back then, as in less than two weeks ago, they claimed “Trump pushed for lower gas prices and got them” before bemoaning the fate of the entire industry, insisting “The oil industry is paying the price.” After acknowledging that the “US produced 13.78 million barrels per day of oil in November, according to the most recent government data, just barely off the record high recorded in October. Daily dry gas production also hit its highest level on record in November after advancing nine straight months. At the pump, where crude oil accounts for roughly 50% of the cost of a gallon of gas, Americans are seeing the lower prices Trump campaigned on,” they proceeded to explain that this news was not as good as it seemed on the surface because there was simply too much oil to go around and it was too cheap for the industry to bear. Instead of increases in production and decreases in cost for consumers being a purely positive thing, “that record production and those low pump prices have come just as the global oil market has entered a period of deep oversupply of between 2 million and 3 million barrels per day — fundamentals that saw crude oil prices (CL=F, BZ=F) drop roughly 20% through 2025.” As Yahoo saw it, the chief challenge for the industry was how to balance declining prices with increasing costs. According to respondents to a survey conducted by the Dallas Federal Reserve, “actual industry costs continue in one direction: up” and “Decreasing oil prices are making many of our firm’s wells noneconomic.” In addition, natural gas producers were also feeling the pinch. “Last month, we paid our gas purchaser to take our gas because prices fell below contract price, and we paid the difference to the purchaser. Never in my 50 years in the oilfield has this ever happened.” Yahoo continued to report that “Activity in the oil and gas sector — which measures a variety of metrics such as employment figures and capex spending — has now declined for three straight quarters, according to the Dallas Fed, even as production has increased,” before concluding that for “US oil and gas upstream producers — the centerpiece of Trump’s ‘Drill, baby, drill’ ambitions — more drilling and lower gas prices may push their business the wrong way.”
Of course, as everyone knows by now, President Donald Trump proceeded with his bold decision to strike Iran two days later and perhaps not surprisingly, the script has suddenly flipped. Prices are no longer too low. They’re too high instead and the experts are now really, really concerned that the sky is the limit to all of our detriment. As CNBC recently described it, “Analysts warned on Monday that there was no precedent for the surging price of oil, as the Middle East crisis deepens fears of prolonged production shut-ins and disruption to shipments through the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz.” Neil Atkinson, former head of oil at the International Energy Agency, was particularly concerned about the situation in the Straits themselves, insisting this is something entirely unprecedented that the “energy markets had never seen before” and presumably could not possibly be dealt with by any means known to humankind save for rapid, permanent, ridiculous increases in prices. “We are in a potentially game-changing and unprecedented energy crisis,” he said. “There is no precedent for this. The sky is the limit.” “Though there are oil stocks around the world, the point is that if this closure of the Strait persists, those oil stocks if they are deployed will be depleted and we are going to be in a situation where, with the oil production actually shut in, in Iraq and possibly in Kuwait and maybe even in time in Saudi Arabia, that we are going to be in a crisis the likes of which we have never seen before,” he added. For its part, CNN dutifully chimed in with similar “reporting” claiming that we are experiencing “the biggest oil disruption in history.” “A historic disruption to the world’s oil production sent crude prices smashing through the $100 barrier Monday for the first time in nearly four years. With no end in sight to the war with Iran, oil futures could have considerably more room to run even higher.” In addition to disrupting shipping through the Straits, they identified slowed production in Middle Eastern countries. “The war has also effectively wiped out the spare capacity, because Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been cut off from global oil markets. Spare capacity measures how much more oil production could quickly be brought back online, if needed, and it typically serves as a shock absorber in energy markets.”
In the immediate context, the words and phrases “if,” “shut in,” “actually,” and “effectively” are doing an insane amount of work to support the conclusion that we are on the verge of higher energy prices than anyone can possibly imagine, possibly forever. To begin with, the spike in prices that has occurred over the past week isn’t historically unprecedented. In fact, oil prices have been higher at least three times over the past twenty years even without counting for inflation. Immediately prior to the Great Recession, oil hit $139.96 per barrel in June 2008 before collapsing to barely a third of that by December. As the economy recovered, prices spiked again, hitting $106.19 per barrel in March 2011 before continuing around that range until September 2014. As recently as May 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, oil hit $114.38 per barrel. The experts and the media surely know this, CNBC even alluded to it, but rather than properly place the recent spike in its context, they are operating under the assumption that this particular increase will continue indefinitely despite the reality that it will only do so if the war itself continues indefinitely, something no one wants and is extremely unlikely to happen, or if we can find no possible ways to get ships through the Straits of Hormuz. In other words, they are feeding fears rather than educating the public. Further, the idea of Iran closing the Straits isn’t exactly new either. While there is no doubt shipping has slowed to crawl since Saturday, March 1, they attempted to close the Straits less than a year ago, after President Trump struck their nuclear facilities in June 2025. As USA Today reported at the time, Iran’s parliament approved a measure June 22 endorsing the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil transportation route, following U.S. airstrikes in Iran. Around 20% of the world’s oil and gas flow through the narrow channel connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman. Its closure would likely mean rising fuel costs for global consumers, including Americans.” Two months later, Congress’ Foreign Affairs Committee issued a report on the feasibility and the impact, writing that “Iran has the military capacity—using mines, speed boats, submarines, shore-based cruise missiles, aircraft, and other systems—to disrupt the flow of commercial shipping into and out of the Persian Gulf. There also appears to be a consensus that the U.S. military has the capacity to counter Iran’s forces and restore the flow of shipping, if necessary. However, such an effort would likely take some time—days, weeks, or perhaps months—particularly if a large number of Iranian mines needed to be cleared from the Gulf. Iran does not appear to have taken steps to actively attempt to disrupt the Strait’s shipping during the June 2025 conflict with Israel; it remains unclear whether Iran was unwilling or unable to do so.”
Ultimately, Iran chose not to proceed at the time, a fact many attributed to pressure from China, which relies on the Straits far more than the United States. This time around they have not succeeded in closing them intentionally, but a combination of increasingly frenetic attacks on neighboring countries, their willingness to attack even countries that were nominally their allies, and the general belief that Iran is willing to do anything and everything to make the war so costly the United States and Israel are forced to relent, has led to a similar result – at least in the immediate term. As Congress found last year, however, the need to keep the Straits open will prompt action by the United States and other countries sooner rather than later, a timeframe of “days, weeks, or perhaps months.” Indeed, a coalition to keep them open is already forming. While President Trump plans to provide Navy escorts in the near future, the United Kingdom, France, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and even China are considering options to do the same. Yesterday, Reuters reported on developments in France, claiming the European country is “deploying about a dozen naval vessels, including its aircraft carrier strike group, to the Mediterranean, Red Sea and potentially the Strait of Hormuz as part of defensive support to allies threatened by the conflict in the Middle East.” “Our objective is to maintain a strictly defensive stance, standing alongside all countries attacked by Iran in its retaliation, to ensure our credibility, and to contribute to regional de-escalation. Ultimately, we aim to guarantee freedom of navigation and maritime security,” explained French President Emmanuel Macron. Though China appears to be operating under the assumption they can be granted some kind of exception to pass through without harm, it’s not clear how such a thing would work and the pressure to reopen the Straits is even higher for them. As the French publication, Le Monde recently reported “As the world’s largest importer of both oil and liquefied natural gas, China is particularly vulnerable to the effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz imposed by Iran. This maneuver aims to take global hydrocarbon supplies and the Gulf region’s economies hostage in response to the offensive led by the United States and Israel. China, the world’s second-largest economy, relies on this strategic chokepoint for 45% of its oil.” Under these circumstances, it’s impossible for me to believe that supposed experts truly think the world will allow the situation in Iran to close the Straits indefinitely, increasing oil prices to infinity, and yet they persist because the media generally feeds on panic and equally loathes the President. If you doubt this, please feel free to point out the equivalent panic when oil spiked even higher in 2022.
If anything, the broader context is even more troubling in a sense. Despite the current panic, it has generally been the progressive, Democrat, and broader media position that oil prices didn’t properly account for the costs of global warming and their implicit belief that prices need to increase quickly to save the planet. In fact, the last time prices spiked, Time Magazine dutifully chimed in with the equivalent of an op-ed claiming “as politicians try to bring down the cost of gas, I want to take a moment to reflect on the true cost of driving. That cost includes not just the price of a vehicle and filling up the tank but also the costs that operating it impose on society, including pollution that drives climate change. Calculating the damage done by pollution and other factors such as traffic and accidents—what economists call externalities—is a fraught process, and economists don’t necessarily agree about all the variables. But one thing is true under any reasoned consideration: driving costs society much more than you’re paying to do it.” Justin Woreland proceeded to calculate this unaddressed cost as “a whopping $2.10 per gallon” if not more. While he acknowledged increasing gas taxes to account for these supposed costs wasn’t going to be happen “despite the clear economic case for gas taxes,” “no matter what happens with the political debate over high gas prices, it’s useful for drivers to be aware—both as consumers and citizens—that there is a much higher cost to driving than they’re paying at the pump.” Two years earlier, Portland Oregon’s City Observatory bemoaned falling gas prices at the start of the pandemic and demanded a tax increase as a result. As they saw it, “Gasoline prices will drop 50 cents per gallon in the next week or so, and cheap gas will fuel more bad results: more air pollution, more greenhouse gases and more road deaths. Now is the perfect time to put a carbon tax in place.” They continued “We, like most economists, have long advocated for pricing carbon as a way to reflect back to consumers the environmental costs of their decisions. The predictable political opposition to that idea arises from the fact that no one wants to pay more for energy, particularly a gallon of gas (which is perhaps the most visible price in the US economy). Implementing a carbon tax as oil prices are falling would cushion the blow.” Fourteen years earlier, then-candidate and future President Barack Obama responded to the surge of gas prices in 2008 not by proposing strategies to lower costs overall, but by claiming the increase was simply too fast. When he was asked “could these high prices help us?” He responded, “I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing. But if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money into their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly US automakers, then I think ultimately, we can come out of this stronger and have a more efficient energy policy than we do right now.”
Somehow, however, we’re supposed to believe that progressives had an epiphany on March 1, realizing that lower oil prices are better at long last, or at least that’s what they would like you to think if you happen to have the memory of a gold fish. In truth, they haven’t cared about oil prices in decades and they don’t care now. They just think it’s a convenient tool to lambaste President Trump and therefore, it’s the outrage of the week.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 