[TheRealThing]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/11/business/...index.html
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It appears as if OPEC is holding all the cards right now.

The cost of energy was dirt cheap in the spring of 2020 as roads and airports sat nearly empty during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Energy demand is back today as the world economy reopens -- but supply simply hasn't kept up. That's why US oil prices have skyrocketed $120 since crashing to negative $40 a barrel in April 2020. US oil prices finished above $80 a barrel on Monday for the first time in nearly seven years.

While demand is strong, oil supplies have simply not kept pace.
US oil production has been slow to rebound from Covid -- even as prices have surged. Many US oil companies are leery of once again oversupplying the market and they are far more focused on returning cash to shareholders who have lost gobs of money over the past decade.

^^ You got the wink wink--- nod nod stuff right Jet.

Try to focus here Outsider and I know it's probably not all that easy in your case. Take lumber for a parallel example. According to reports, the lumber shortage is attributable to the fact that lumber producing entities are very much limited to how much lumber they can produce owing to government CV-19 mandates.

This has caused lumber to become far more scarce and as the result, lumber costs have skyrocketed.  In other words the sole contributing factor to screamingly high lumber is government regulation. --- Same with crude oil. On Jan 20, 2021 Biden brought the full force of the federal government to bear on oil producers, and directly caused oil to become much more scarce. Hence the astronomic rise in price from $1.86 per gallon when Joe got elected to $3.13 per gallon at present. But in both cases when costs double or triple, people merely stop buying gasoline and lumber.

Oil companies make money SELLING oil. The more they sell the more they make. Don't try and razz-ma-tazz me with that weak stuff you put out about oil companies trying to repay stockholders because they're scared all of a sudden to sell gasoline.  Absurd