We’ll start this off with a quote from our buddy Gerard Gibert, who knows more about, well, everything, than Joe Biden does and that completely includes the business operations of ExxonMobil…

What’s going on here? Forbes did a pretty good summary…

So Biden has zeroed in on a new boogeyman — the “big corporations” who he claims “don’t pay their fair share” of taxes. On Friday he singled out ExxonMobilXOM -5.7%:

“We are going to make sure everyone knows Exxon’s profits. Why don’t you tell them what Exxon’s profits were this quarter? Exxon made more money than God this year and by the way, nothing’s changed. One thing I want to say about the oil companies, talk about how they have 9,000 permits to drill. They’re not drilling. Why aren’t they drilling? Cause they make more money not producing more oil. The price goes up number one and number two, the reason they’re not drilling, is they are buying back their own stock, which should be taxed quite frankly, buying back their own stock, and making no new investments. So ugh, I always thought Republicans were for investment. Exxon start investing and start paying your taxes, thanks.”

Naturally curious what folks at ExxonMobil might think about being singled out for this sort of ad hominem attack on the company’s integrity by a sitting President of the United States, I reached out for comment and received the following response from spokesman Todd Spitler:

We have been in regular contact with the administration, informing them of our planned investments to increase production and expand refining capacity in the United States.

We increased production in the Permian Basin by 70%, or 190,000 barrels per day, between 2019 and 2021. We expect to increase production from the Permian by another 25% this year. We’re spending 50% more in capital expenditures in the Permian in 2022 vs 2021 and are increasing refining capacity to process U.S. light crude by about 250,000 barrels per day – which is the equivalent of adding a new medium sized refinery.

We reported losses of more than $20 billion in 2020, and we borrowed more than $30 billion in 2019 and 2020 to support our investments in production around the world. In 2021, total taxes on the company’s income statement were $40.6 billion, an increase of $17.8 billion from 2020.

The president of the United States is simply lying to us. The reality is that Exxon and other oil companies are drilling and investing, on a massive scale, both in the United States and worldwide. They pay many billions in local, state and federal taxes. And if the government doesn’t think it’s enough, then Congress can change those laws.

The temptation here is to say that Joe Biden is clueless about ExxonMobil’s business model, and so the things he says aren’t really lies but rather the product of abject economic illiteracy.

And given Biden’s deteriorated mental state and the fact that his potato brain is barely capable of forming simple thoughts these days, that temptation isn’t irrational.

That said, Biden’s handlers aren’t complete morons. They are economic illiterates, but they know more than they let on. They know their voters are morons who can’t process basic information and they trade on that fact.

Which means that yes, these are lies.

When gas prices are above $5, it’s a fabulous opportunity for retailers to undercut the market in order to seize market share. Why isn’t that happening?

It isn’t happening because there’s a lot more to selling gasoline than just pumping oil out of the ground. And while companies like ExxonMobil are busy ramping up production in the Permian Basin, it takes lots of other places producing oil to meet America’s demand for gasoline.

That oil has to be transported to a refinery. Then it has to be refined and transported to gas stations.

Part of that transportation process involves trucks, and what the Biden administration has done to the trucking industry is to all but destroy it.

Oil from the Permian Basin, and other new and expanding plays, generally moves through pipelines. The Biden administration has made building oil pipelines all but impossible.

In fact, everywhere up and down the production chain this administration has placed roadblocks and made things more expensive. It’s more expensive to pull oil out of the ground. It’s more expensive to move it. It’s more expensive to refine it. It’s more expensive to bring it to the retail market. And it’s more expensive to sell it.

Of course, everything is more expensive because Biden dumped $2 trillion in free cash on an economy that didn’t need it. Gas is $5 per gallon because everything else is through the sky as well. Not that it can’t come down.

American oil production dropped by a million and a half barrels a day at the beginning of the Biden administration. That’s when prices initially shot up, and you’ll remember Biden then went begging to Russia and Saudi Arabia to boost their production. He got nowhere with the Russians and Saudis, who liked the idea of static production and rising prices and profits – exactly what he accuses ExxonMobil of. But then American producers began ramping up production where they could.

But expanding new production? Not with the regulations this administration imposed. And not with its ban on new drilling on federal lands, including a shutdown on lease sales offshore.

Nobody is going to buy Biden’s demonization of ExxonMobil and the oil industry. Not when they see his performance on everything else, and not when they already know thanks to stupid statements Biden has made about some “incredible transition” away from fossil fuels that nobody voted for.

The real question is when the oil and gas sector, including companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron who are doing everything they can to placate the woke mob rather than fighting for their own industry, will wake up and start actively waging war against the Biden regime which is waging war on them. It’s time. Maybe the pushback Forbes noted is a beginning.