Energy prices, even though they have come down a bit, are still sky-high, whether it's heating fuel, gas-powered appliances, electricity, diesel, or the price for a fill-up at the pump. Over here in San Diego, I saw gas at one station going for $4.99 a gallon, and everyone marveled at how "low" that price was. We had been paying $5, $6, and $7 in the last six months.

Joe Biden knows this is a problem now that he's lost the House. He actually thinks that inflation comes from oil rather than monetary printing presses turned up to 11 for government boondoggles, and he's emptied our Strategic Petroleum Reserve to add supply to the market so that gasoline prices will come down for a spell. That's a solution that will last only so long as the SPR does. Now he has given Venezuela the green light to pump oil in its partnership with Chevron. 

According to Axios:

The Treasury Department on Saturday said it would allow Chevron to resume pumping oil from Venezuela oil fields.

Why it matters: The license, granted by the Treasury Department, would allow the California-based oil company to pump Venezuelan oil for the first time in years in joint ventures with Venezuela's national oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PdVSA.)

• It also signals an opening for other oil companies to resume their business in the South American country, two years after the Trump administration cracked down on companies’ activities there in an effort to put pressure and oust the Maduro government, the Wall Street Journal reports.
• Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the Unitary Platform, an opposition coalition, reached an agreement to implement a humanitarian program and continue negotiations to hold free and fair elections within the country.

According to the New York Times, quoting the respected economist on Venezuela, Francisco Monaldi, emphasis mine:

Following the expected accord, other companies are likely to press the United States to further lift Venezuela-related restrictions, including sanctions that ban entities in India and elsewhere from importing Venezuelan oil, said Francisco Monaldi, director of Rice University’s Latin America Energy Program.

Venezuela got itself its sanctions package for drug dealing, stolen elections, and human rights violations, sounding like a Latin American version of the entire Biden family.

Now it's getting some sanctions lifted, a stupid thing as it undermines the Venezuelan government the U.S. recognizes, which is the one led by Juan Guaido. This undercuts that, even though this supposed agreement between Maduro and the opposition is supposed to create some nicey-nice. If Maduro won't recognize Guaido and has a well-oiled rigging machine in place for elections, why would he recognize any election where he would lose? It seems pretty window-dressy.

But the oil and the oil cash Maduro will eventually get one way or another are real. Maduro has been itching to restart Venezuela's oil operations the better to augment the drug dealing that keeps his regime afloat. Cash will flow to Venezuela even if not directly, all because Joe Biden, despite the White House's denials, wants more oil on the market to bring oil prices down, and in his mind, inflation, even though lower oil prices will do nothing to halt the broader inflation.

He's bending over backward to buttress a crummy regime that ships tens of thousands of illegal aliens from Maduro's emptied prisons into the U.S., yet won't lift a finger to increase domestic energy production.

He's clamped down on that from day one of his miserable administration, forbidding drilling in federal waters, refusing to issue new permits for such purposes, and leading the charge to condemn fracking and other oil production. He's also demonized natural gas production, coal mines, and other practical means of energy production, claiming he's just transitioning the U.S. to a green energy economy. It's complete garbage. If Biden is going to open Chevron to energy production in Venezuela, why isn't he opening Chevron and the rest of Big Oil to energy production here in the states? Fortifying a petrotyrant on a phony peace deal with his opposition doesn't buy the U.S. much if anything, given that Maduro will always disappoint. But opening up the U.S. to drilling, and restoring the U.S.'s energy self-sufficiency might make a dent in at least energy prices as well as put a pretty penny from taxes into the federal coffers. The green billionaires, some foreign, who are stopping Joe from doing this are mighty powerful. But the disorderly reality remains, that Joe is letting Venezuela pump oil, just not America.

Caricature by DonkeyHotey, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0