The current crude oil futures contract for Feb. 2024 . . .

 is $75.18. The price for Feb. 2027 is $67.97. Moron.

By way of explanation, I've been suffering from a barrage of would-be commenters claiming that the reason for high gas prices is that Joe Biden cancelled the Keystone X pipeline and arctic oil leases. As I noted in an earlier post, the price of gas has been rising since mid-2020, and it continued after Biden took office at about the same rate. The reason is that production has not kept up with increasing demand since the pandemic low point, exacerbated by the recent Ukraine crisis. As I pointed out, traders buy oil to sell now, not two or six years in the future.

I was then peppered with idiotic comments to the effect that I don't know what I'm talking about, because:

1) Until 2021 we were energy independent.

I explained why that's dumb in a front page post. The U.S. is still a next exporter of petroleum products, but they're sold on a global market so we have to pay the same price everybody else does.

2) Yabbut there are ways that the administration could increase oil production if they wanted to.

I ignored this because it isn't true. Petroleum is extracted in the U.S. by private corporations. As far as I know right now they're pretty much pumping at capacity but if they aren't, there's nothing Joe Biden can do about it because this is a capitalist economy.

3) Incomprehensible gibberish.

Also ignored.

4) Yabbut there are futures contracts for oil.

Well yes, but what does that have to do with it? Buying a futures contract is not the same thing as buying oil, because in the latter case you actually own the goo and you either have to store it or sell it, and obviously what you're going to do is sell it now. If you think the price will go up in the future you might buy a call, which is irrelevant to what the price is today, but in any case right now the price for oil 2 and 3 years from now is much lower than the price today, so traders expect it to go down which would not make them in a hurry to buy now even if you think they might just put it in tanks and wait for the price too go up, which they don't actually do. I was just pointing that out.

Now yes, what I think needs to happen is that the price of petroleum goes to approximately zero because nobody is buying it, but that won't happen for many years. If it goes up in the meantime that will actually help because it will encourage alternatives. But that's an entirely different discussion. What set all this off was the administration getting blamed for the price of gas today, which is just dumb. Anyway it's still cheaper than it was in 2014 so I don't know what the big freakout is anyway.