From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome to Free Expression with me, Jerry Baker, from the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

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Now, this week, we're going to take a deep look at what's happening in global energy markets. Last week, Saudi Arabia, it's friends in OPEC Plus. Ignored President Biden's pleas and opted to cut their target for oil production by 2 million barrels a day. That's a move that's expected to keep global oil prices high with far-reaching economic and political implications. Meanwhile, the Biden

administration is looking for alternatives, including perhaps even relaxing sanctions on Venezuela.

And of course, all this is happening as Europe is battening down the hatches ahead of a cold winter

with soaring prices for natural gas in the context of Russia's war on Ukraine. Well, to discuss all this,

I am joined by the world's leading authority on all

matters, energy, Daniel Jirgin. Daniel literally wrote the book on the energy business with his

Pulitzer Prize-winning work, The Prize, the epic quest for oil, money and power. As I say, he's

the world's leading guru on energy matters and written many other works, including his latest book,

The New Map, Energy, Climate and the Clash of Nations. He founded Cambridge Energy Research Associates and has advised governments around the world on energy policy, and he's now Vice Chair of S&P Global. Daniel Juergen joins me now. Daniel, thanks for being here. Pleasure to be with you. So, Dan, tell us where we are. We've been seeing this turbulence in global energy markets really all the way through this year. In the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, of course, gas prices and oil prices shot up. Oil went way above $100 a barrel. It came down somewhat over the summer, not all the way back, but sort of floated downwards somewhat below $100 a barrel, down actually into the 70s a barrel. And then in the last month or so, was picked up again and had this effort by the Biden administration unsuccessful effort to try to get oil production up to keep prices down or to push prices down. He was rebuffed by Saudi Arabian OPEC plus. He's talking to other countries now, possibly about getting oil production. So give us a sense. What's going on here? What's the balance of supply and demand? What's happening with oil and other energy prices? Give us the global context,

Dan. Jerry, I think the most important thing to note is that the energy crisis did not begin on

February 24th when Russia invaded Ukraine. It really began about six months earlier when we saw

the beginnings of a global energy crisis.

And it was three months before the invasion of Ukraine that the Biden administration did its

first release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that it began talking to the U.S. oil

industry about raising production.

So I think what we've really had is a collision here, a collision between a global energy

crisis as a result of

what I call preemptive underinvestment in oil and gas and even coal. And all those prices were

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