The price of gasoline is critical to inflation, interest rates, economic and the upcoming election in November. The price of gasoline determines world politics and wars. What would you do if you were President?

            The price of gasoline is dependent on the price of oil which is dependent on the amount of oil for sale. The amount of oil produced by OPEC is supposedly tightly controlled by voluntary agreements among its members. Another “restriction” is the sanctions imposed by the United Nations and members of NATO.

            Oil is currently selling for less than $80 per barrel. Iran is allowed to sell one million barrels a day to comply with the UN sanctions but it sells over three million to China and India. By law, we can sanction the small refineries in China but they wouldn’t care since they have little or no trades with outsiders. The only way cut them back to one million would be to board the mega-tankers and confiscate the oil by taking them to another port. After two or three tankers are held the others would be unlikely to carry above sanctioned amount. The loss of two million barrels would raise prices twenty to thirty dollars or more. It could also cause a higher level of violence by Iran and push their nuclear path to a bomb.

            Russia’s sanction is to not sell oil above sixty dollars but they go around this by moving oil on a Russian-flagged tanker and in the middle of the Black Sea transferring oil to other countries’ flagged tankers. The oil is then sold at market price. Stopping this would mean encountering Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and a shooting war with NATO. Price of oil would skyrocket.

            So what would you do and when?