Refinery Shortage Becomes Political Liability With No Easy Fixes

No US president has been reelected with gasoline prices above $4 a gallon, and the price at the pump is almost $4.70 this summer. It’s the single biggest economic threat to Joe Biden’s presidency.

Biden’s first response was urging OPEC to raise global oil supplies, with some success. He tried to shame US shale drillers, too, for failing to put rigs back to work, with less success. Then administration officials began to confront an arguably bigger and longer-term obstacle to reining in the fuel prices that have sent inflation to the highest level in decades: America’s refining complex is ...