Link to Article: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59353194
President Joe Biden is working on lobbying countries to lower their crude oil prices as gasoline prices surge in the US. Other large economies such as Japan and India, are looking to do the same as the US. However a timing of when the national crude oil reserves would be released is still unclear, as organizations like OPEC (an organization of petroleum exporting countries) are denying Bidens request to pump more oil as they argue the world is not short of crude oil (basically worried doing this will cause a surplus of crude oil). Another notable reason for companies like OPEC denying excess oil to be pumped, is the new coronavirus lockdowns in Europe which has caused the price of Brent crude oil (relatively light crude oil made from a blend of crudes from 19 oil fields in the North Sea) per barrel to drop. An increase in Covid cases again would cause a surplus in oil (as travel greatly decreases if lockdowns are set) if more is pumped, this explains why OPEC favoring to continue pumping a steady amount of oil, or even reduce it, instead of agreeing to Biden’s request.
My thoughts on the article is that the new discovery of the Covid variant Omicron may cause lockdowns again depending on the severity of the new variant which will in turn cause the US to continue suffering the higher prices for gas. As for right now, unless Omicron causes another nationwide lockdown (as we saw in March 2020) then I see Gasoline prices unfortunately staying steady for the next few months. This article is important because it analyzes both the upsides and downsides in easing oil prices. On one side lowering the cost to fill up the tank allows for people to spend more money on other goods and services, yet at the same time this puts a strain on the domestic oil industry.
This article relates to the idea that a more powerful country (like the US) will be able to convince other countries to lower crude oil prices since the US has the ability to get other countries with less power to do what it wants ( a.k.a cooperation from fear). If Biden decides to use a realist approach of tackling the gas prices militaristically, then things would get done faster and objectives may be reached more efficiently however consequences would be much more extreme then if the S decided to take a more liberal diplomatic approach (for examples if countries apart of OPEC agreed to pump more oil then the US would return a favor.