Energy is not Joe Biden’s strong suit
It should now be obvious that most anything Joe Biden chooses to do is based on either vindictiveness and/or stupidity. Worst of all, a lot of what he does fails.
Perhaps Biden believes in the Davos Green nonsense, hawked by Greta Thunberg, the depressed child who never had a youth, and John Kerry, the former senator who has few intellectual scruples, because it seems politically appealing to the radical lefties who have taken over the Democrat party.
Also, Biden thought he would be able to stick it to Trump’s energy decision to drill, drill, drill. Curtailing drilling for oil not only caused the loss of good-paying jobs, crippling towns where the workers lived, and became the genesis of our inflation, but also returned America to being energy-dependent on our adversaries.
Apparently, what Biden knows about the oil business could be put in a thimble. He just does not have a “slant” on “dirty” energy technology.
He even stopped completion of the Keystone Pipeline, choking delivery of tar sand oil from Canada. Meanwhile, oil industry folks decided to improve their ability to get more oil from their current wells, so America is now back to producing more oil than we can drink.
While all this was occurring, Biden drew upon stored oil to keep the price of gasoline from going to $10.00/gallon, and now he is replacing these strategic reserves, stored in case of war, at higher prices.
I seriously doubt that this was part of his Bidenomics strategy.
Ah, the story does not end there, however. So let’s update ourselves.
About a week ago, Biden and his know-nothing youthful energy staffers decided to curtail the building infrastructure sought by an American company that delivers liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe. Buying this product from America helps reduce our trade imbalance and tamps down the Biden inflation spiral.
On the other hand, it also means that Europe may be forced to turn to Russia, as our ability to provide them with LNG could decrease.
Now we come to another juicy fact. Apparently, the youthful gang in the White House may not have been aware that when you drill for oil, gas is often a byproduct. If there is no demand for that gas, it is flared — i.e., burned — which impacts the atmosphere at the drilling site.
The demand for oil is not going to disappear. In fact, as more supposed clean manufactured products are mandated, more oil and gas will be required.
Furthermore, demanding that American manufacturers reduce the impact on our atmosphere, while China continues to increase its use of coal, places America at an economic and competitive disadvantage. Why? Because we are increasing our productivity costs.
Nuclear power was the answer, but lawyers and NIMBYs drove the cost up with burdensome legislation and eternal lawsuits, all resulting in expensive delays. Energy from hydrogen fusion is yet to come, but it offers hope and could become as crucial as the invention of the wheel.
Oil goes into making plastics, and that alone touches virtually everything we use in our daily lives. But this seems to have been an inflationary afterthought for Biden.
The Saudis are rethinking their own economic future and are planning to diminish their dependence on their massive oil reserves. But we are still talking about 25 or more years.
So here we are, stuck with a vindictive, ignorant president, who never held a job outside the walls of Congress, making decisions that impact a resource we are blessed to have, making its production more costly and restricting our ability to sell it to worthy buyers. Perfect.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.