A lot of the "inflation" we're experiencing right now is straight-up price gouging. There have been a number of reports of record profits amid all of this.
A lot of the "inflation" we're experiencing right now is straight-up price gouging. There have been a number of reports of record profits amid all of this.
Aside from undoing the sanctions, there's physically no way to fix this in the medium term aside from demand destruction from a recession or worse. In the medium to long term oil companies are not going to make major investments that will never be paid back because of anti-fossil fuel policies.
There's always been a substantial lag. Production/shipping always takes time, plus you've got the sticky price effect to contend with. The falling price of crude today will result in cheaper prices at the pump later this year, but not immediately.
But from what I understand, gas prices also rose much faster in proportion to the price of oil than they have in past oil price spikes. And while I haven't seen any numbers specifically for oil/gas companies, we've definitely been seeing record profits alongside the rising prices in various places these past few months.
I can't claim that it's the whole of the current inflation, but there's definitely some opportunistic price gouging going on.