Big Oil profits aren’t driving gas prices, experts say, despite Biden’s ‘price gouging’ accusations

Big Oil has been the go-to boogeyman for President Biden and Democrats over alleged “price gouging,” with “Putin’s price hike” a close runner-up.

But profits made by the oil industry — while at record levels — ebb and flow with global energy markets, not because the firms are manipulating costs, according to market analysts.

“It’s just political posturing and pandering,” Ed Hirs, an energy economics professor at the University of Houston, said of the president’s anti-corporate rhetoric. “If the focus is just making profits, when is [Mr. Biden] going to turn his guns on Apple?”

Apple made more than $25 billion in the first quarter of this year and nearly $95 billion in 2021, staggering numbers that are far higher than that of any energy corporation.

Recent high earnings of top oil companies allowed the industry to recoup its record losses during the pandemic and returned billions of dollars to shareholders.