CNBNews

 

Dorothy Philbin | CNBNews Columnist

 

Every day when I'm driving passed Wawa or Royal Farms I wonder if I should buy gas now or will it be cheaper tomorrow?  Now, $3.50/gal looks good compared the $5.00/gal we paid only a couple of months ago.  I think everyone knows that the price will be back to $5.00/gal on November 9, 2022 - the day after the election.

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First, President Biden blamed the oil shortage on Russia.  Has Russia given us any more oil?  Of course not.  Then the President blamed the greedy oil companies.  Have the oil companies suddenly become generous?  Of course not.  So why are the prices suddenly going down, if only temporarily?  Where did the oil come from?

The United States keeps an emergency stock of many necessities, oil being one of them.  Why?  Occasions such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy.  These stocks are there for emergencies, not to win elections, and certainly not to go to other countries.

Our emergency stockpile of oil is down to 439 million barrels, the least amount since 1975.  We use 19 million barrels each day, one million barrels coming from the emergency supply.  Knowing just that much, one might think "well, we're good for 439 days, about a year and a half."  True?  No way!  

We are not the only ones siphoning off some of that emergency supply.  In March, 2022 the Department of Energy auctioned off 30 million barrels from our emergency stockpile.  Didn't know that?  Not to worry - no one did.  It was done very quietly.  The Department of Energy received 126 offers and they chose 12.  Most of that went to Italy where there is a pipeline leading to France, The Netherlands, and other European countries.  In addition, some oil went to India and then there is China.

 

China, the country who has taken so many of our jobs, our intellectual property, and given us fentanyl in return has gotten almost one million barrels of our oil. Interestingly, the oil didn't go to the Chinese government, it went to an oil company with an American investor - a $1.7 million dollar investor - our First Son, Hunter.

A couple of questions I have are:

1.   Why did we sell even one barrel of our emergency stockpile?  That makes no sense at all.

2.   For how much did we sell the oil?  Did we do any other country a favor and give them a discount?

3.  What was done with the money we got for that oil?

4.  Why was all this done so quietly?

5.   Where did Hunter get the $1.7 million he invested in one company which went into another company, and so forth.  Has anyone tried to "follow the money" as Deep Throat advised?  Did he pay taxes on this money?