As October drew to a close, the White House saw another potential energy flashpoint on the horizon.
Diesel and heating oil inventories in the U.S. Northeast were getting worryingly low. Officials swung into action, organizing a series of calls between Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and several of the country’s biggest oil refiners to discuss strategies to boost stockpiles. The tone was cordial, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.
But the very next working day, the oil industry was blindsided. At a hastily arranged news conference on Oct. 31, U.S. President Joe Biden castigated Big Oil for handing "outrageous” profits to shareholders and executives rather than bringing down prices at the pump. Unless that changed, he warned, oil companies faced more taxes. "Their profits are a windfall of war — the windfall from the brutal conflict that’s ravaging Ukraine and hurting tens of millions of people around the globe,” he said.