As an energy expert and an independent who has foolishly made it his mission to fight misinformation about not only oil and gas but also renewable energy, I often find myself playing the role of the spoiler. I’m okay with that, let’s be honest I love it. My most recent act of spoiling was explaining to people on the left that the Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act was a complete scam. Let’s take a look back to late 2021 and 2022 and revisit how all of this unfolded.
Katie Porter, the congresswoman from California’s 47th district has made quite a name for herself by fighting big corporations over price gouging, and in late 2021 the oil and gas industry came into her crosshairs as gas prices continued to escalate. Here is one of her many accusations of oil company’s price gouging.
Representative Porter along with other democrats carried out a nearly year-long campaign against U.S. producers. The main theme was ‘Price-Gouging’. Eventually, the Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act authored by Porter was introduced and passed by the House of Representatives. The promise of lower gas prices was appealing to pretty much everyone I reckon. But herein lies the rub. Katie Porter and the democrats spent a year telling the American people that big oil was conspiring together to keep oil and gas prices high to price gouge them. That’s called price fixing, and it’s already illegal, that’s not price gouging. Price gouging is when an individual raises prices during an emergency, it’s not a collective effort by a large group of players, it’s the act of a single person. Katie Porter knows this.
You have to look no further than her legislation to see that, as it specifically states just that. So the legislation that was going to lower gas prices for all Americans only focused on the actions of individuals during a time of international crisis. The way I read it, it was only targeting retailers, certainly not big oil, or little oil for that matter. To this very day, democrats and some independents across the country believe that the Democrats tried to lower gas prices and the Republicans stopped it. The fact is most states already have this same law in place and the handful of states that don’t cover it under their consumer protection laws.
Simply put, this whole thing w a political move to get Republicans on record voting against it, then of course there is the bonus of blaming oil companies for gas prices to villainize them and push a green agenda. Watching the intellectual giants on the left and right in Washington where gas prices are concerned has been nothing short of comedic gold. I have yet to hear a single politician actually address any of the causes of higher prices. I’ve heard nothing of the OPEC 2020 deal, I’ve heard nothing of our reduced refining capacity. I’ve heard nothing but noise from any of them.
This, my friends, is why we don’t solve problems in Washington, we only make them worse.