Can the U.S. President Affect World Oil Prices?

While oil traders and speculators can affect oil prices, they don’t “control” them any more than the president does. Saudi Aramco is, by far, the largest oil company in the world. Shell and bp are insignificant by comparison:

https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/the-largest-oil-and-gas-companies-in-the-world/

Earl: “The oil speculators and oil traders control and manipulate the oil prices for themselves and for Big Oil. BP is the largest oil trader and Shell is the second largest.” I don’t understand your comment. A little sleuthing; OPEC  current member states hold about 80% of the world’s proven oil reserves. Several major oil producing countries including Russia have aligned with the group to form an alliance known as OPEC+. OPEC produces about 40% of the world’s crude oil and its members’ exports make up around 60% of global petroleum trade. The group aims to regulate global oil prices by coordinating on reductions or increases in production. As for speculators, to speculate is to form a theory or conjecture about a subject without firm evidence. I was an oil trader on the NYMEX some years ago. Standing in a crowd of traders who speculated, hedged or took delivery, we managed risk as best we could with current and expected information. The terms contango and backwardation are used relative to expected future price. If we controlled prices we all would be extremely wealthy. In fact some of the speculators and traders lost large fortunes.

I’m not sure I understand how oil prices change. Nor do I understand how corn prices change. I wish I could find a good resource explaining how commodities work (usually when I search all I find is how to invest in commodities). Perhaps someone can illumine me. My understanding so far is that commodities are sold somewhat like T-bills or a regular old auction where bidders determine price based on the current supply and demand. I think that’s how corn works? If there is a bumper crop of corn and the supply is higher than demand, the price drops. If there are crop failures  or a reduction in acres planted and the harvest is below demand then the price rises. Oil supply is not so dependent on weather but mostly by political factors and mainly manipulation of supply levels by cartels such as OPEC. The inelastic demand of oil means that prices are greatly influenced by perturbations in supply, just like with corn. But it seems there are other factors like futures traders that apparently speculate on the price a year from now. Not sure how that works. Also the supply of oil depends on investors supplying operating capital. So it seems to me like a president can definitely affect oil prices by indirect means. He can decrease supply by threatening to put oil companies out of business in a few years making it so that investors don’t want to invest. And as Biden has shown, he can drain our SPR of oil to boost supply in the hopes of lowering prices. There are many factors in oil prices, but it seems that one of them in NOT that oil companies are jacking up prices. We are often told to blame the oil companies for greed when prices go up, but there is never an explanation why those supposedly greedy corps allow prices to go down, sometimes way down. Apparently they decided to be the opposite of greedy? But my main comment here is that I wish someone could explain it to me or direct me to a simple resource that quickly gives an overview of how corn and oil are traded and how prices can be affected.

I don’t think anyone would seriously argue the President can “set” world oil price

And yet, many people do.  I see pictures of Biden on gas pumps all the time that point to the price and say “I did that!”