Commentary
While finally bowing to public pressure, President Biden announced Tuesday that he was “banning all imports of Russian oil and gas energy,” and in doing so, he said, “the American people will deal another blow to Putin’s war machine.” However, he refuses to budge off his stubborn position of reducing U.S. fossil fuel production in favor of subsidizing renewable – solar and wind – energy.
Biden seems obsessed with carrying out former President Obama’s desire to cut greenhouses gases in 2009, when he boldly conceded that “electric rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
The American public wasn’t sold then and they especially aren’t today, but Biden is hamstrung by the new radical left of progressives that have taken over the Democrat Party.
On his first day in office, he revoked President Trump‘s March 2019 permit for the Keystone Pipeline, buried in an executive order on protecting health, the environment and restoring science to tackle the climate crisis. He also placed a moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters.
While claiming that Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry had determined in 2015 that approving the Keystone XL pipeline “would not serve the U.S. national interest,” he revealed their lack of intelligence.
If they believed that, it’s further evidence of their failure to understand the importance of energy independence domestically and on the world stage. Clearly, it was the first of several vengeful moves to revoke Trump policy decisions.
Nine months later, after issuing policies to stymie oil and gas producers in an effort to limit production and force them out of business, he was on his knees with OPEC, begging them to boost oil production.
He embarrassingly had to ask U.S. producers to help bring down the cost of fuel, while federal regulators were out to punish their industry with onerous regulations. And tapping the reserves was meaningless.
Claiming there are some 8,000 drilling permits available to the industry, he fails to mention the bureaucratic delays spread across at least four federal agencies, with higher costs estimates of greenhouse gas emissions, and plans to restrict methane emissions from natural gas drillings.
Refusing to reverse his executive orders on the Keystone pipeline and cutting red tape on drilling, the feckless Biden is now looking to bad actor regimes in Venezuela and Iran for oil, in an effort to discourage U.S. fossil fuel dependency.
Unlike the U.S., where we have cleaned up production methods, both of those countries produce dirty oil and have poor emission statistics. John Kerry will probably refrain from criticizing them at the next meeting of Paris Accord members.
As prices at the pump continue to rise, Biden hasn’t heard the last from the American public. A man interviewed at a gas station this morning said he would have to forego lunch because of the increase at the pump.
FINALLY, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg suggests people buy an electric car; with a government subsidy, of course.
Now, more than ever … may God continue to bless the United States of America.
