The Sconi

With the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) having now gone public with its decision to slash oil production by as much as two million barrels per day, hard-pressed White House officials are now taking an approach staffers hope will stabilize the market while also absolving the administration of blame.

“We believe the decision that OPEC+ made last week was a mistake and it was short sighted. The president has talked about recalibrating, readjusting our relationship with Saudi Arabia,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters during a recent White House press briefing.

In arriving at its decision, Marketwatch.com reports OPEC officials announced they were reducing forecasts for oil demand by 460,000 barrels per day largely based on an increasingly unpredictable world economy.

With the administration’s long-held constrictions on potential new sources of oil already causing prices to spike, The Center Square reports the White House officials have been quick to take action, including President Joe Biden moving to announce plans to further tap into American oil reserves to the tune of releasing up to 15 million additional barrels of oil before the end of the year from Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) stocks.

As the oil crisis has lingered, over the last year U.S. oil reserves in the SPR stocks have now been depleted by more than 33%, according to Y Charts.

“We are all living the consequence: Outrageously high prices and growing shortages,” Daniel Turner, executive director of energy worker advocacy group Power the Future, told The Center Square.

Here in Wisconsin, as all the chaos becomes even more pronounced, gas prices have consistently hovered around record levels, with AAA reporting average prices currently at $3.79 per gallon, up from $3.44 just a month ago.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports tension between the United States and Saudi Arabia has deepened stemming from the fact that the U.S. requested that the production cut be delayed by at least a month, a move Saudi officials claimed was totally driven by a desire to keep public sentiment positive with the midterm elections taking place in just a matter of days.