The Mummified Meat Puppet Administration (MMPA) might reasonably be labeled the “Who You Gonna Believe? Us Or Your Own Lyin’ Eyes And Bank Accounts?” Administration. No Bidenite makes that label change more convincing than Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, who went full “Who You Gonna Believe?” on the 01-05-24 edition of CNBC’s “Squawk Box:”

Co-host Becky Quick asked, “Secretary, we’ve talked a lot about what’s been happening with ExxonMobil and Chevron as well, walking away from basically the refinery situations, their operations in California. They’ve taken massive write-downs in the last several days, to the tune of billions of dollars. Mike Wirth was on talking about this last night, and mentioned that the situation in California is largely because of California policy. I realize that’s not a federal policy, but when you look at California and the gas prices there, it creates unhappiness with the consumers. They’ve basically said, we can’t continue to make investments in some of these operations, whether that be the refineries or the pipelines, because we don’t think we’ll get the return on investment. When they say something like that and you have multiple big companies basically walking away from some of these things, what does that mean? What can you do on the federal level?”

Because of course America should do whatever California is doing.

Granholm responded, “Well, it’s interesting, because I think there [are] a lot of those who have refineries who are converting some refineries, anyway, to biofuels. There [are] significant policy incentives to the creation of drop-in biofuels, so you’re seeing some of that happening. The refineries that are around the country are working full tilt and are producing. So, we are — but I will say this, Becky, we are seeing, in the United States, we think that we have achieved peak gasoline, because of the increase in electric vehicle sales. And obviously, this is just the U.S., other, more developing countries will — are still looking at significant — potentially significant — but lessening so, increase in demand. But, in the United States, we’re seeing a leveling out and a diminishment of the demand for gasoline, and we just got the numbers yesterday for the sales of electric vehicles. … [I]n 2023, 1.4 million sales of EVs. That’s a 50% increase from the year before. That’s going to have an impact.”

“Peak gasoline?!”  That must be why Joe Biden has drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to historically low levels, and why he has done virtually nothing to refill it. That could be kind of a problem if one or more of the regional wars he’s encouraging by discouraging our allies and refusing to deter Iran’s proxy states regularly attacking our troops explodes into open conflict. We have so much fuel, and at such historically low prices, gas stations are overflowing and refusing deliveries! We have so much production the MMPA is trying to shutter refineries and pipelines! Around the world, no one wants gasoline anymore, and it’s all because of the MMPA’s marvelous, planet-saving policies. All hail Secretary Granholm, climate change warrior queen and savior of the planet!

Image: Ford Mustang Mach E, England, Right Hand Drive. Wikimedia Commons.org. CCASA4.0 International.

In the real world, market reality is notoriously stubborn. If there is an excess of supply, there is less demand and prices decrease. Oddly, despite what people like Granholm say, gas prices aren’t going down, which in objective reality terms means there is strong demand and barely adequate supply.  

As to the impact of all those electric vehicles for which American drivers are clamoring, 4000 dealers recently begged President Biden to stop subsidizing EVs. It seems they can’t give them away, which kind of contradicts Granholm’s rosy predictions.  At least half of all Ford Dealers won’t even try to sell EVs, which are rusting, unsold, on their lots. We have half the Buick dealers we had last week. They took buyouts rather than lose money on EVs. Ford largely bet its EV future on the F-150 Lightning pickup, but Americans are getting wise. Ford announced it was halving its EV production plans. But what about GM? 

General Motors is building Silverado EVs. It delivered a whole 18 of them during the third quarter of this year. It planned to expand production beyond its Detroit-Hamtramck facility, also known as "Factory Zero", by 2024 to Orion Assembly where the Bolt EV is built, albeit not for much longer. That plan has now been pushed back to late 2025, and according to GM, the decision was not made due to any supply shortages, or even the ongoing United Auto Workers strike. It could be indicative of waning consumer enthusiasm for fully electric vehicles as a whole.

“A whole 18?” “Could be?” Billion-dollar production decisions add up to “could be?”  Well OK, but…who you gonna believe?

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.