Over the weekend, PJ Media’s Rick Moran reported that President Joe Biden was expected to approve an oil drilling project on federal land in Alaska. Sure enough, he did so on Monday, and in essence, he thumbed his nose at the radical environmentalists who have driven his energy agenda to date.
Rick made a strong point that Biden understands the practical problems that high gas prices are posing for his legacy and re-election chances.
“Unlike his radical green base that thinks the world economy runs on daffodils and unicorns, Biden realized when gasoline at the pump was closing in on $8 a gallon that it might not have been the brightest idea to shut down oil pipelines and shelve oil and gas drilling licenses on federal lands,” Rick wrote. “Despite cheers from greens, the rest of America was ready to pick up their pitchforks and march to the White House with buckets of tar and baskets of feathers.”
The Washington Times reported that the ConocoPhillips oil project, which is also called Willow, will produce 180,000 barrels of oil per day, with projections saying that it could generate 600,000 million barrels over a 30-year period. To put that in perspective, the Willow project could be responsible for 1.5% of the entirety of U.S. oil output.
Politicians from both parties in Alaska applauded the president for greenlighting the $8 billion-dollar project because of the money it would bring into the state. But it’s not too difficult to imagine who wasn’t happy — it’s easy to tell by the D next to their names.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Minn.), a horrible person in general who helped author the infamous Green New Deal, made his thoughts abundantly clear.
“This decision not only leaves an oil stain on the administration’s climate accomplishments and the president’s commitment not to permit new oil and gas drilling on federal land but slows our progress in the fight for a more livable future and puts into harm’s way the neighboring Native Village of Nuiqsut and the Arctic landscape,” Markey said.
Markey also issued a joint statement alongside Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y), Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), and Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) complaining that the “decision to approve the Willow project fails to live up to those promises” that the Biden administration made to prioritize fighting climate change.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was so incensed that when a reporter asked him about the Willow decision, he avoided the subject and laid the problem at the feet of House Republicans, who have named H.R. 1, a rollback of Biden administration environmental rules, their top legislative priority.
“The bottom line is that this H.R. 1, as I said, is a bill just for the oil companies,” Schumer grumbled. “It doesn’t deal [with] what we need for clean energy, and we need to get something done better.”
You see, Schumer has to retain some semblance of unity with Biden, so it’s the fault of the GOP.
Sure, the president made all sorts of promises to focus on climate change and decimate U.S. energy independence, but he and his administration have seen how poorly that has fared with so many Americans. So you don’t have to be a cynic to view Biden’s approval of the Willow project as a calculated political move. These Democrats ought to be able to understand that much, too.
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