I & I Editorial BoardThat 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.
“We have the energy, we have the resources here. And we have the technology. We’re a million barrels short a day right now that we could just ramp up like that. We can do certain things,” West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said Sunday on “Meet The Press.”
But green politics won’t allow the U.S. to take advantage of its bounty of crude and natural gas. Oddly, though, the environmentalists who hold energy policy hostage when Democrats are in power have no problem with this country importing oil from nations where the drilling and transportation processes are dirtier than they are in the U.S., and the regimes are not democratically elected.
This is the California model. Officials and activists’ rush to create an all-renewables electricity grid has forced the state to import energy from producers in Arizona, Baja California, Colorado, Mexico, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah that rely on natural gas, nuclear energy, and coal, three sources that California wants to eliminate from its portfolio. But this is acceptable, because it’s happening somewhere else, outside the view sheds of the wealthy enclaves on the coast.
It’s the same with the mining of the natural resources that are needed to build batteries for electric cars, cell phones, and other modern conveniences. The political left is happy to use these items as long as the extraction for material used in their manufacture is done away from their myopic gazes in countries where environmental protections hardly exist.
Yes, this not-in-my-back yard attitude is hypocritical, but worse than that, it produces poor public policy. We hope some day a majority of voters consistently figures this out in election after election.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
The Dems are engaged in a multi-pronged war against domestic energy. For example, pressuring banks to stop lending money for oil and gas production. And appointing Federal Reserve and other nominees with anti-fossil fuel agendas. On top of this, higher interest rates to combat Biden-inflation and money-supply contraction (tightening) will put a damper on borrowing for domestic energy production. The USA’s idiot Transportation Secretary thinks the solution is electric vehicles, not comprehending that means building more electrical power plants (burning fossil fuel). The Dems seem intent on making the USA like California, which according to EIA data “tops the list of electricity-importers by a wide margin,” importing 80 million MWh of power in 2020. I suspect the ruling party would be happy to have an inflationary depression that reduces driving and economic production as a way to stop emissions and promote global cooling. The USA promoting fossil fuel production in Iran and Venezuela while blocking domestic energy production is a strange response. Everything the Dems touch turns to crap (e.g. wars, inflation).
Hell bro, the Dems are engaged in a multi-pronged war on humanity. They’re not a political party, they’re a death cult.
“It’s easy to blame Biden because he is at fault.” LOL.
The article is scathing on Biden, but probably still not scathing enough. Only boiling him in oil could be scathing enough.
Domestic oil production is not a faucet that can be turned on and off, as Manchin seems to think. Drilling shale-oil wells happens one at a time, and a return to net exporter status will take thousands of wells and years of time. Therefore, higher gasoline prices will remain until the true cause of their price spike is addressed… supply disruption, and traders’ concerns over possible disruption. Those concerns will hopefully last only as long as the war in Ukraine, which may be over soon, either way.
And America’s oil surplus in 2019 was the result of years of increases that began during Obama’s tenure, was driven by market forces, and could have been even more extravagant if Trump had been President.
Finally, America’s supply of oil is limited, and will only be a long-term option for another decade or so…there’s a good chance that shale oil production may have already peaked out, with most of the major shale plays having already gone thru their growth modes, and now at or close to maturity.
The fault of this catastrophic presidency falls on every clueless Brandon voter.
In Leftist Dem strongholds like Los Angeles, even local office candidates (e.g. city council) compete on platforms that along with the usual leftist wish list include shutting down existing oil wells. The local mirrors the national. Same is true in Michigan, Minnesota, New York, etc. Meanwhile they drive their vehicles, rooting for oil drilling in Iran and Venezuela, anywhere but their own backyard.
“ We hope some day a majority of voters consistently figures this out in election after election” My ‘hope’ is wearing very thin! The 2020 Presidential Election was stolen from Donald J.Trump…the Duly Elected President of the United States of America 🇺🇸
The Radical Left Democrat Party of Death Degradation/MSM… The Evil UniParty!
Conspired to prevent DJT from serving his Second Term.
JB was installed in the Oval Office as a mere figurehead serving Obama’s Third Term.
I believe that everyone who knows the first thing about so-called “green energy” knows that wind and sun cannot alone even come close to supplying the energy the U.S. needs. Of all of the stupidities of the “Biden Administration,” this is possibly the worst and most blatant. Restart Keystone XL, for goodness. sake.
FJB
Carbon dioxide? A compound that every living breathing creature on earth exhales and is absorbed by trees and other vegetation to produce Oxygen and the greening of earth, the lifeblood of life on earth and the more the better.
The natural cause of climate is Mother nature over which humans have no control. Do humans control the Sahara winds that generate hurricanes in the Americas?
Do humans control the jet stream which generates the weather conditions in the United States? Do humans control the Pacific Ocean which generates the cyclical El Nino weather conditions in the United States?
Let’s analyze today’s climate :
-Drought and forest fires in the Western USA-cause climate change
-Torrential rains, floods, tornadoes, Mid and Eastern USA-cause climate change
-Torrential rains, floods in Europe-cause climate change
-Drought in Australia- cause climate change
-Coldest winter ever in Antarctica- cause climate change
it is, has been and always will be Mother Nature at work and humans have no way to change it.
Since less than 50% of a barrel of crude oil is turned into gasoline, 44 to
48 percent, the remaining 50+percent provides refinery gas, propane
butane, aviation gasoline, jet fuel, kerosene, diesel fuel, home heating
oil, lubricating oils /greases for both transportation and
industrial applications, feed stocks for petrochemical, detergents,
plastics and rubber industries, fuels for marine shipping, asphalt for
our roads and highways and last but not least military specification
petroleum products.So which industries do the Greenies plan to do without? A carbon based petroleum free world appears bleak
indeed as humanity may be forced to learn new skills, such as, starting
fires with two sticks and hunting whales from sailing ships for sperm
oil.
What is missing in any discussion with green energy advocates are two words first the word “reliable” meaning available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, in blizzards and droughts, on no sun cloudy days, in high mph hurricane winds or low or no winds.They avoid any discussion of Germany’s green energy fiasco, becoming dependent on Russia’s natural gas, France’s nuclear produced energy and Norway’s hydroelectric produced energy. And the second word “life time” of windmill farms which is 20 years based on the Danish experience.
https://www.twi-global.com/technical-knowledge/faqs/how-long-do-wind-turbines-last
I would think the true “axis of evil” was composed of the democrats/MSM/globalist deep state.
There’s probably a lot of other shady characters you could add like republicans, intel agencies, the medical industrial cartel which includes all the psuedo federal agencies like the CDC, the FDA, NIAID, HHS, hospital corporations, and medical insurance. And let’s not forget the Military Industrial Complex. Let’s just narrow it down to just about everything associated with the Feral Government, its bureaucracies and all 50 state governments.
But, you can throw in Russia, China, Iran if you wish. Those we can defeat.
Our own government. Not so much.
I’m probably now considered a “domestic terrorist” for voicing an opinion about our corrupt and criminal government.
Cutting of Domestic ENERGY should be a Impeachible offense
Doesn’t it seem strange that many, if not all, of the energy policies we have from Democrats hurt this country while benefiting our enemies? Who are these people working for?