The returning to normal(ish) phase - in late 2020, early 2021 - increased it.

We're still dealing with supply chain issues, and will for a while. The idea that you can turn the economy down 30% and back up 30% in less than a year with no lasting effects is silly.

> When this thread started the war in Ukraine was the issue.

Yes. Starting from an already-disrupted screwed-up economic baseline certainly doesn't help.

Simply put we were net oil exporters under Trump, all of the sudden we are back to begging the Saudis. Given the environmental retoric of this administration it isn't unreasonable to conclude that they had a hand in that.

Please peddle your disinformation elsewhere.

Begging the Saudis under Biden: https://www.npr.org/2022/06/25/1107628743/biden-will-visit-s...

We export light sweet crude.

We don't have the refineries set up to refine that type of oil.

We import sour crude that the refineries set up to process more efficiently in the 90s (before fracking).

Saudi oil is the sour type - and so we import that and the price of Saudi oil has the biggest impact on US gas prices.

To change this around, oil companies in the US need to retool their refineries to the light sweet type that is produced domestically.