AP: Simple “Math and History” Show No Link Between US Oil Production and Gas Prices

A little addendum to my posting of earlier today.

You’ve no doubt heard all the rhetoric—Republicans on the presidential campaign trail and in Congress are almost universally blaming President Obama and the Democrats for the recent surge in gas prices. They say the president has choked off new domestic energy development and stopped the flow of new oil from Canada by holding up the Keystone XL pipeline, and argue that both have contributed to rising oil and gas prices. On Tuesday, the president of the American Petroleum Institute jumped into the fray by saying Obama could lower gas prices by opening up more federal land to oil drilling and reversing his decision on Keystone.

Well, now comes an old fashioned piece of shoe-leather journalism that should—but almost certainly won’t—put an end to that argument. Jack Gillum and Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press analyzed 36 years of monthly data on gasoline prices and US domestic oil production and found no statistical correlation between them:

“Math and history (show that) US drilling has not changed how deeply the gas pump drills into your wallet. If more domestic oil drilling worked as politicians say, you’d now be paying about $2 a gallon for gasoline. Instead, you’re paying the highest prices ever for March… That’s because oil is a global commodity and U.S. production has only a tiny influence on supply. Factors far beyond the control of a nation or a president dictate the price of gasoline.”