I have a new note out today um the thing I want to go back to is those attacks on those Russian refineries in that new note you say there's reports at the White House they tried to stop Ukraine from launching those attacks you say they're credible how meaningful to the White House also to prices of the pump um is that Russian Supply I mean this is a huge issue for the White House the White House is deeply concerned that Ukraine has essentially said look if you don't give us the weapons we're goi
ng to defund Russia and robust revenue from oil has been one of the reasons why Russia has been able to stay in this game I mean they have one of the biggest budgets they're coming out now with the defense budget up like 6% of GDP on defense spending that is driven by robust oil revenue and so from the standpoint of Ukraine they're like we're going to try to defund this machine all right so a possible disruption does that immediately lead is it is it like a mechanism where that leads to higher p
rices here in the US right now they're going after Refinery so they're going after Russia's ability to provide diesel to the front lines sell refined products overseas they have not yet hit export terminals major pipelines that would be a game Cher for oil prices and I think that is what the White House is concerned about does Ukraine essentially say everything's on the table when it comes to oil at a time where we have these OPEC Cuts in place and US production is not expected to grow like it d
id last year so we're looking at a tighter Market questions about what the White House will do it for over $4 a gallon in the summer coming at a difficult moment politically for this White House all right so the thing that's uh kind of a trigger for consumers at least is that $4 you're just already like yes uh $4 a gallon uh right now again we're at 353 gas prices are up about 1% year-over-year at the same time diesel prices are down more than 4% that's kind of deflationary which on the on the o
ther side is possibly good for for the Biden administration because it's keeping transport cost down but you're saying summer driver season's coming up Summer driving season that is all important for the White House over the summer questions again about out what leverage do they have to pull now there's going to be a June OPEC meeting there's a monitoring meeting this week but there's a big June OPEC meeting I expect they'll try to put pressure on countries like Saudi Arabia to increase producti
on if they don't get significant additional Supply from Saudi and OPEC do they have to go back to the spr all right so the meeting is coming up this week it's not a full OPEC meeting it's kind of like an administrative meeting right is it admin but they can but is it a market mover I mean are we going to hear something out of there possibly might move this or Market that we've already seen sometimes we get surprises from these monitoring committee meetings they turn them into full meetings we do
n't have any expectations we're going to change policy so the cuts that they've announced are going to be rolled over till June so that June meeting becomes very important for the Biden administration because again if you don't get more OPEC barrels you have ongoing attacks on Russian economic you know energy infrastructure what happens with the SP that's what I would look to so nobody has more insight on the Middle East than you back to those OPEC barrels what about Saud economic diversificatio
n goals so they will have to balance when the White House goes to them and says we want more barrels they have to think about their bottom line revenue as well
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