Why This Oil Price Spike Won’t Last
Gas prices jumped over the past week, and they’re already starting to come back down. That’s not a coincidence. It’s what happens when the underlying energy foundation is sound.
Before that story gets buried, here are the facts.
In 2022, prices stayed elevated for months leading up to and after Russia invaded Ukraine, not simply because of the war, but because the Biden administration had already broken America’s supply response mechanism. Blocked federal leases, canceled pipelines, threatened energy executives with criminal prosecution, and drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to its lowest level since 1983. When the shock hit, America had no cushion.
The situation today is fundamentally different.
U.S. oil production hit 13.6 million barrels per day in 2025, the highest output of any nation in the history of the world. The Permian Basin alone is producing 6.3 million barrels a day, with a breakeven price around $62 per barrel. That means production stays profitable and keeps flowing even if prices soften. For twelve consecutive months before this conflict, oil traded at $60–$70 per barrel, calm and stable even through Venezuela, even through OPEC moves.
That stability didn’t happen by accident. It happened because for the first time in years, energy companies had a clear regulatory environment. Open leases. Fast-tracked permits. A government that treated the industry as a national asset instead of a political target. Capital came back. Investment returned. And with it came the strongest domestic supply foundation in American history that stabilizes the entire global economy.
The current price spike is geopolitical in origin and temporary by nature. America has the production capacity, the investment base, and the policy environment to absorb it.
This is not 2022. The industry built something different over the last year, and it’s going to hold.
March 12, 2026