The Crude Hypocrisy and Rot of Green Politics

[Geee]

Issues & Insights

That gasoline prices are becoming unaffordable to many Americans is becoming old news. What got us here, though, is a story unheard by much of the public. It starts and ends with green politics.

As gasoline reaches prices that made it a luxury good during President Joe Biden’s year in office, the White House is considering asking the Saudis to produce more oil. At the same time, the administration apparently wants more oil from Venezuela, which is languishing under a dictatorship that’s squarely aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Iran, a member in good standing with the axis of evil.

“Joe Biden is frantically searching the globe to see if anyone but Texas might have some spare oil,” says a tweet from Bryan Dean Wright, a former CIA officer and Oregon Democrat, that sums up well the comical blundering as well as the corrupt decision-making of the current White House.

 

Under Donald Trump’s presidency, the U.S. became “a net total energy exporter in 2019 for the first time since 1952,” a position maintained in 2020, says the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It was a historic moment.

In 2020, the U.S. also “exported more petroleum than it imported – marking the first time that has happened,” says the Daily Energy Insider. But in 2022, the U.S. petroleum trade is expected “to shift toward net imports.”

It’s easy to blame Biden because he is at fault. This president has shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried 830,000 barrels of crude each day from Alberta to the American heartland; proposed to permanently ban offshore oil drilling off Florida’s coastline; and suspended or delayed new federal oil and gas leasing. The policies have contributed to higher prices over the last year because oil companies, as any industry would, price in expected future tight supplies to avoid shortages.

It didn’t have to happen this way. The resources are still available.