politics

America is a NET EXPORTER of oil.

Big whoop. The article isn't talking about oil production and it isn't "oil" that matters; it's what that oil is refined into that matters and the US doesn't have the capacity to create much more in the way of refined products like Diesel, Gasoline, Kerosene, etc than it already does. In fact we've been importing a LOT of refined petroleum for years now to make up for our lack of refining capacity and pre-invasion much of it was imported from Russia itself!

So when Russian oil refineries suddenly explode and those refined petroleum products are no longer available on the world market the prices go up. This is exactly how you can end up with low oil prices but high gasoline prices. If Russia can't refine the oil they'll try and dump it on the market for whatever price they can get but that low cost oil is headed into a refinery system that's already working at capacity and can't make anything more than it already does.

It's a bit more complex than that. Just because the US is a net exporter doesn't mean that it doesn't still need to import. There are several types of oil and currently the US still needs foreign imports of certain types that we rely on but don't produce enough of.

That being said, I still think it makes sense to destroy infrastructure supporting the Russian invasion.

Except they still sell oil at global market prices, and a big player was caught colluding with OPEC. In a global commodity market without government intervention it doesn't make a huge difference where the oil is being pumped up

I'm okay with reducing my gas use and/or paying more for gas in order to keep Putin out of Ukraine. I know that not everybody has room to stretch their dollar, so I don't mean to come off as callous, but my minor inconvenience is easily worth stopping bombs from hitting civilians in Ukraine. We already know that appeasement doesn't work. Putin will not stop. Let's stop allowing money to decide for us whether we should let monsters thrive.

You bring up a good point that isn't addressed very well. There's still less refined oil being produced that is demanded. In this case, its for Russia. I suppose this demand is partially reduced as Russia will try to minimize unnecessary refined oil usage (maybe eventually increasing local prices to discourage unnecessary use), but even then I still feel their reduced refining capabilities should have an impact on prices.

I suppose that other refineries could pick up the slack, but I'm uncertain whether that really makes sense for them, and there's not an easy way to countries against Russia can reduce their own usage of refined oil in the near term.

Ultimately, time well tell whether these attacks are having a strong impact on global refined oil.

EDIT: one thing that they do mention, that counteracts my point above is the fact that Russia exporting additional unrefined oil, that would mean unrefined oil pricing would decrease, which could counteract the reduction in production of refined oil.