Average price of gasoline in the U.S. hits a new record high of $4.40 per gallon. Democrats think that's really good news!

Yesterday the *average* price of gasoline in the U.S. hit a new record high of $4.40 per gallon.

Of course if you're a good Democrat you know that's actually GOOD NEWS, right?  

"Wait...I don't live in NYC or DC so I have to use my car to get to work, or buy groceries.  Car uses gasoline.  So why are higher gas prices good news for me and my family?"

Ooooh, your "social credit score" just dropped 100 points for asking that!  Cuz as every "good citizen" knows, higher gas prices mean people eventually reduce their consumption of gasoline, maybe even end it altogether by buying one of those faaaaabulous electric cars that every car maker is advertising every hour on every channel.  Cuz those don't use energy, right?

And of course duh biden regime wants Americans to use less gasoline cuz gasoline produces duh dreaded pollutant "carbon dioxide," which all good citizens know bees makin' duh planet burn up!  Bees killin' all duh puppies an' kittens an' unicorns!

So see why higher gas prices are actually good, citizen?  Good.  So no more of those silly questions, peasant citizen.  

So now let's show you how our wunnerful, brilliant preznit and his handlers are working to make gas prices go even higher!  This morning the "Department of Interior" announced it was cancelling a "lease sale" covering a million acres in Alaskan waters, and another paltry 100,000 acres in the Gulf of Mexico.

Yay!  Cuz if the gruberment doesn't lease acreage to oil companies, there won't be any oil produced from any of that acreage.  So oil prices go even higher, and gas prices follow, which we just showed you is really Good!  Yay!!

Okay, now let's get serious.  The statement by Porridgebrain's "Interior Department" spokeswhore "explaining" this move to credulous reporters was a masterpiece of propaganda, designed to fool credulous reporters and a public that understandably doesn't know a thing about how humans find and "produce" oil.

In other words, the "explanation" was 99% bullshit.

First, consider this masterpiece from the spokeswhore:

"10.9 million acres of offshore federal waters are already leased to the oil industry, [but] the industry is not producing on more than three-quarters of that acreage."

What do you think the purpose of that statement was, eh?  It was designed to make the public believe oil companies don't NEED the cancelled lease acreage, cuz they're "not producing" on 3/4ths of the acreage they've already leased.  The unmistakeable message to anyone not familiar with the oil business is that the gruberment shouldn't be leasing any more acreage.

To understand why that is a lie, deliberately pushed by the regime, and which will make the U.S. dependent on imported oil, raise the price of gas and kill the economy you need to know a bit about how the oil business works:  

Most exploratory drilling doesn't find commercial quantities of oil--in which case a company will have wasted on the order of $100 million if the well was offshore.  So drilling is always a huge, costly gamble.  So since companies only have a limited budget for exploration, understandably they only spend that money drilling prospects that are most likely to be the most profitable.  They don't just randomly punch expensive holes in the ground.

If a rock formation contains oil, that oil collects at the top of an upside-down U formed by the rock strata below the ocean floor.  The only way to tell if one of those formations exists in a given area is to hire highly specialized companies to "shoot seismic."  And keep in mind that just finding such a structure doesn't mean it contains oil. 

When the government announces an intent to lease a specified offshore area three to five years ahead, oil companies spend millions of dollars hiring seismic companies to "shoot seismic" over the area.  The raw data is processed to produce the likely strucure.  If there's a promising structure--and the company calculates that this is one of the most attractive "prospects" it has-- it submits a sealed bid to lease drilling rights from the government.  

In a typical lease "sale" the government offers 14,000 tracts, and will get bids on 100 or so.  But the winning bids typically net $100 MILLION for the government.  Some sales have netted $2.8 BILLION.  And that's before a single hole has been drilled, so no one knows if there's any oil there!

But now the clock starts ticking, because the leases only last for ten years UNLESS they produce commercial quantities of oil or gas withing that period.  So a company that wins a lease now needs to sign a contract with a drilling company to drill the prospect.  In Alaska that rig will cost the company between $170,000 and $220,000 per DAY--and that was before diesel fuel went to $6 a gallon! 

Again, the odds are that the first exploratory well won't find commercial amounts of oil.  Or even before drilling, further geological work could conclude that the prospect isn't one of the company's best, in which case all the money spent getting to that point is wasted.

Now for years the government had been holding lease bids twice a year, in March and August.  But the first week biden was in power his handlers ordered the interior department to stop that.  The regime called it a "pause" because the real goal--stopping all leasing and exploration on federal land--would have triggered a wave of opposition.

But as with Obama's "DACA" re-writing of federal law, biden's executive order violated federal law, so oil companies sued, and the scheduled March 2020 sale took place as planned.  But the regime cancelled the usual August offering, and the companies cited the earlier court order, so the offering took place three months later, in November of 2020.  That was "lease offering 256."

The regime again violated the law to cancel the lease offering for March of 2021, and the next offering was November of 2021.  It took place as scheduled, with winning bids totaling $191 million.  But of course after the biden regime had clearly signaled to all Dem judges and environmental groups that the regime was totally opposed to drilling for oil in U.S. waters, environmental groups immediately invoked their usual tactic to get their way:  Find a friendly judge who would rule for them.

And they did: Rudolph Contreras--appointed by Obama to the District Court for DC--ruled that the DOI's "failure to calculate potential emissions from foreign oil consumption had violated the National Environmental Policy Act," and all the leases were cancelled.

Now: IF a lease is eventually found to hold commercial amounts of oil, it takes an average of ten years from the time a company submits the highest bid to win a lease, to the time significant oil begins to be produced.  Second: The output from all oilfields drops with time, as the oil is depleted.  So if the U.S. is to just keep oil production from falling, companies must continually discover and produce new oil, to compensate for depletion.

When domestic production falls, that oil has to be imported (assuming exports are available).  That makes oil more expensive, and increases our nation's trade deficit.  So by now having had no leasing in the 18 months since November of 2020, any oil those areas could eventually have contributed has now been pushed down the road by...18 months.

Oh, I forgot:  If you're a Democrat that's perfectly fine with you, cuz...wait for it...higher gas prices are really a GOOD THING, eh?  At least that's what the Democrat party claims.  And as a good Democrat, you believe 'em.  Cuz the party of Nancy Pelosi and Chucky Schumer and Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell and Jerry Nadler and Gavin Newsom have never lied to ya before, right?