It was an executive order from his first week in office. Might be been his first day mof. I had to ask an oil engineer in one of my forums how it worked. It was one of those things labeled an "oil subsidy". Might have well been one. But bottom line is it made investors pony up more unguaranteed cash up front to get financing.

I'm not sure that chart says what you think it says. Most from that source are a bit obtuse. See where it says exports and imports are about the same? That's processed not crude. And I'd be willing to bet they've got an "oil equivalent" for our light stuff which sneaks in natural gas to the output. They've done that before.

Either way we've plateaued. As has a whole lot of the world. Demand keeps rising and supply is stuck at current levels. When you do something stupid like we did with Russia you end up having supply chains changing.... And refineries just can't change quickly to a different crude composition. So you get weird gluts and shortages and craziness.

In the end I still don't for a second believe that those in charge wanted to spike energy prices this far this quickly. But they did want to restrict supply a bit and increase costs. They told us point blank they would. But like a monkey with a loaded pistol, once they started pulling the trigger no one was safe.