Attributing high oil and gas prices to these companies’ greed and market power, the White House proposed new investigations into oil companies’ “anti-consumer behavior” last fall. At the end of March, the president also asked that Congress place extra fees on already-agreed federal oil and gas leases that the administration says aren’t being used. There’s nothing in these leases that obliges companies to drill and even those that want to and can afford to are often stuck waiting for further approval from the administration and courts.

On April 6, House Democrats took up the witch hunt, hauling oil executives before the Energy and Commerce Committee to accuse them of price gouging. Even sensible Democrats like former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers see through this nonsense. He noted recently that it doesn’t “make any sense at all to blame inflation on market power” and is “not serious economic reasoning.” He added that those who engage in those arguments “should be taken less seriously as a consequence.”

During his campaign, Mr. Biden promised to take extreme steps to crush the U.S. oil industry. Since entering office he has repeatedly paused new oil and gas permitting and leasing. Because America is the world’s largest producer of oil and gas, these policies and the threat of more hostile action have contributed to the global energy shortage and price increases. Both oil and gasoline prices roughly doubled in the U.S. from around the time Mr. Biden was elected in November 2020 to March 2022. In Europe, natural-gas and electricity prices have spiked to as much as 10 times what they were when the year began.

Even as Mr. Biden searches for ways to expand the global energy supply, he refuses to give up many of his green goals. In the past few weeks, the administration has been looking to get more oil from Canada but has insisted it won’t reconsider Mr. Biden’s decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline.

The president also seems uninterested in reinstituting the permitting reforms he rolled back earlier in his administration, which were designed to speed up permitting for American energy infrastructure and production. Lenders don’t want to make long-term investments in an industry that seems to be on the president’s blacklist, unless the political risk the administration is imposing on new drilling can be justified by even bigger profits. This will in turn force consumers to pay even higher prices.

Good work by WSJ debunking cynical political talking point that #oil companies are gouging consumers with high #gasoline prices.

One more point, independent gas station owners make most profit on products in the store, not at the pump. https://t.co/dPEn9Ca8Fi via @WSJ

— Mark Mathis (@TheMarkMathis) April 13, 2022

If Exxon, Chevron, Shell coordinate to restrict gas supply & spike prices, we’d call that an antitrust violation and prosecute the alleged felons.

But when their top shareholders like BlackRock & Vanguard force them to do the same, we call it “ESG” instead.

Funny how that works

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) May 6, 2022