The Real Truth About the Insanity of Biden's Energy Policies – What You Need To Know
President Biden has been in continual reaction mode since he declared war on fossil fuel his first day in office and was apparently caught completely off guard by the energy crisis and skyrocketing gasoline prices that followed. So, for the last 22 months he has come up with every imaginable excuse that the crisis is not his fault and a number of unwise ways to fix the crisis of his own making. He has blamed Vladimir Putin, oil companies, locally owned gas stations, the American people, and other easy targets. President Biden has literally taken no responsibility for any personal involvement in the rising costs of fuel that impact every American.
On his first day in office, Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline. This put thousands of people out of work. He told them to go get another job, maybe a green job. Seriously. It hurt our Canadian neighbors who were going to use the pipeline to transport oil to its ally to the south. The pipeline was the safest way to transport the oil, in spite of what Biden’s progressive anti-energy advisors told him. The oil now continues to be shipped by rail. Unlike pipes, trains can run off the tracks or have wrecks with vehicles or other trains. No matter to the Biden Team. If not on a rail, the oil moves by truck.
Our dear leader then canceled all drilling and exploration on federal lands. This included any new offshore operations. This, too, put many Americans out of work. President Biden decided not to issue any new oil leases—anywhere. Just this week, Biden spokesman John Kirby defended his boss on these energy issues. He told a group of reporters there were 9,000 oil leases already granted by President Biden that the oil companies were not using. This is misleading and Admiral Kirby is smart enough to know it. The leases were not given by Biden. They were already granted when he took office.
Additionally, the 9,000 oil leases touted by Mr. Kirby do not equate to drilling for oil. A lease is only the first step in a long, convoluted process. When a company acquires a lease, it is a gamble: There may, or may not, be oil in that parcel. Also, a company can start drilling only after a permit is granted. A permit is not the same thing as a lease. The federal permitting process goes through an approval process by a dozen or so federal agencies—several of which are against fossil fuels to begin with. This takes an unbelievable amount of time. Then, numerous environmental groups take the oil companies to court to try and stop the exploration. Sometimes the adjudication of these lawsuits takes years.
The ensuing energy shortage and soaring prices were predictable. The rising cost of gasoline and fuel for heating homes coincided with the highest inflation in 40 years. We the people of the United States began to really struggle. So much of the U.S. economy is connected to energy. It impacts not only filling up your car. Farmers use gasoline and diesel to produce crops. The food is transported on trucks burning diesel. The cost of food went through the roof—but so did every other product, as they are all moved by the trucking industry.
President Biden went from blaming everyone else for the problem to frantically trying to come up with a fix. He went, basically hat in hand, to Saudi Arabia and OPEC asking that they increase production in order to bring down prices. Saudi Arabia is the same country he intended to make a pariah in the world. Biden also created fear in the other Gulf States by trying to placate Iran and renew the Iran nuclear deal. They are all members of OPEC. To no one’s surprise, they sent Biden home empty-handed.
Biden then began emptying the Strategic Petroleum Reserve of the United States in order to lower gasoline prices a little. This reserve is for national emergencies. It is supposed to be used only in the face of national emergencies like earthquakes, hurricanes, or war when our energy supply is impacted. But an election was coming, the American people were unhappy, so the President used the reserve petroleum anyway. It is now at the lowest level in 40 years.
Last week President Biden decided that socialist dictators who kill and imprison their opponents are not so bad after all: He lifted sanctions on Venezuela and renewed a license for Chevron to begin pumping oil again as a joint venture with the Venezuelan state-owned oil company. In order to get the Venezuelan dictator to agree to the deal, Biden also freed up $3 billion in frozen Venezuelan assets to address “humanitarian” needs. In this farcical agreement, dictator Nicolas Maduro agreed to consider having free and fair elections in Venezuela. If you believe Maduro will do that, you really do need to look into purchasing that beachfront home in Arizona. As the Wall Street Journal opined, maybe if Texas declared itself to be a dictatorship, President Biden would allow them to produce more oil.
As all of this is taking place, we do have an ally in a small nation off the coast of Venezuela: Guyana. They have discovered they are an oil-rich nation. With a population of 800,000 people, they have more oil per capita than any nation except Kuwait. But Guyana needs money for infrastructure and other things to really beef up their oil production. They applied for a loan with the Inter-American Development Bank. It is a financial institution made for this type of project. The Biden Administration vetoed the loan. China is already moving forward to sign contracts with Guyana and get in on the projects.
The United States is an energy-rich nation. We have so much oil and natural gas that, before Biden became President, we were energy independent. We were setting up the process and facilities to sell natural gas to our European allies which would release our friends’ dependence on Vladimir Putin and Russian energy. But President Biden put a stop to that, too. This is a crisis of Joe Biden’s own creation. Violating our moral values when it comes to rewarding dictators, our national security needs, and common sense—he insists on his energy policies no matter how insane and hurtful they are.