Tech large Jeff Bezos criticized a tweet from President Biden calling for oil executives to scale back gasoline costs.
The Amazon.com founder was responding to Biden’s criticism of firms working fuel stations and setting costs for shoppers. “This is a time of war and global peril,” the president tweeted on Saturday. “Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product. And do it now.”
Bezos responded over the weekend. “Ouch,” he mentioned in a tweet. “Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this. It’s either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics.”
The nationwide common for fuel was at $4.812 on Sunday, in keeping with AAA, and ticked all the way down to $4.80 on Monday. In Massachusetts, the common value per gallon was $4.85 Monday, in keeping with the journey membership.
John Kirby, a senior National Security Council spokesman on the White House, hit again at Bezos’ assertion. “We obviously take great exception at the idea that this is somehow misdirection,” Kirby mentioned on “Fox News Sunday.”
He mentioned Biden has proposed measures, together with on the Group of Seven summit, that would decrease U.S. gasoline costs and has freed oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. “If everybody cooperates on this we can bring the price down by at least about a dollar a gallon,” Kirby mentioned.
Bezos has accused Biden of “misdirection” earlier than. In May, the e-commerce government hit again at a tweet from the president saying inflation might be tamed by making rich firms “pay their fair share.”
Biden has been criticizing oil and fuel companies for making windfall income. Gas and vitality are a number one driver of inflation, posing a significant political problem for Democrats with midterm elections solely months away.
Meanwhile, there are indicators the worldwide surge in the price of gasoline is beginning to weigh on demand, in keeping with the world’s largest unbiased oil dealer.
“There’s very clear evidence out there of economic stress being caused by the high prices, what some people refer to as demand destruction,” mentioned Mike Muller, head of Asia at Vitol Group, who’s primarily based in Singapore. It’s “not just oil, but also liquefied natural gas.”
The so-called crack unfold that refiners get from turning West Texas Intermediate crude into gasoline and diesel has reached $50 a barrel, greater than 3 times the common for this century. On Friday, Exxon Mobil Corp. mentioned its second-quarter refining earnings jumped by $5.5 billion.
“Refining margins are at levels that nobody would’ve predicted,” Muller mentioned. “The consensus out there seems to be that they cannot possibly go even higher than this.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”