In recent days, Joe Biden has been pretending that the domestic oil supply crisis is not his fault.
BIDEN: "It's simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production" pic.twitter.com/i2Aqfz7Cxw
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 8, 2022
How many times can you call BS on that? Courtesy of Jim Treacher, we know that Biden began trying to shut down the American oil industry from day one.
We’re in the midst of a climate emergency, and President Biden knows we have no time to lose. Today, he’s taking action to address the climate crisis, create good-paying union jobs, and build an equitable clean energy future. https://t.co/IhdZMfh2uo
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 27, 2021
In addition to shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline, Biden halted oil and gas leases on public lands while the Democrats in Congress were jawboning oil companies to slow down production.
Just recently, they changed their minds.
New: Democrats pressured oil companies to slow down production in October. The follow up hearing scheduled for today was abruptly canceledhttps://t.co/1RwJ3ZZrzH
— Joe Gabriel Simonson (@SaysSimonson) March 8, 2022
Biden is banking on most of his friends in the media covering for him as he lies about the previous year’s efforts by his administration to cut the supply of oil. Now with the Ukraine War and sanctions against Russian energy, all of a sudden, Biden needs more oil.
Now Biden needs to decide which he fears more: some nebulous “climate crisis,” or the wrath of voters who need gasoline to do their jobs and live their lives. Brazenly lying is always Biden’s first instinct, but it’s not going to stop what’s happening.
Vladimir Putin didn’t do this to us. Joe Biden did this to us. Putin is just lending him a helping hand.
But propaganda won’t fill the voters’ gas tanks. So Biden, who has always paid lip service to getting rid of the process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, now finds himself having to go hat in hand to the frackers, begging them to produce more oil.
But why should they? Once the crisis is past, Biden is just as likely to give the radical greens running the EPA the go-ahead to shut the wells down. And then where would the frackers be?
Shale executives have complained that the administration’s freeze on leases for drilling on new federal lands, its early rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada and Biden’s promise to “transition from oil” have chilled the sector.
Investors have also piled pressure on an industry that burned through hundreds of billions of dollars in shareholder capital during debt-fuelled production binges before the crash, insisting operators pay back capital instead of pouring it into new drilling campaigns.
While production has risen in recent months, especially in Texas, lobbyists continue to push for more supportive policy from the Biden administration.
Indeed, it’s not so much what the Biden administration has done so far, or even what they want to do now. The problem for oil producers is what government actions may come in the future and what the president’s environmental whackos are wanting to accomplish in order to save us all from burning up.
The researchers calculated that ConocoPhillips will have to reduce production by 69%. Chevron faces a 52% cut. Shell will have to shrink production by 44%. BP and ExxonMobil will each have to cut production by a third. Only a handful of fossil fuel companies—BP, Eni, TotalEnergies, and Shell—have acknowledged that their production will have to drop at all. But even they are still investing in new oil exploration.
Biden is a liar. He’s speaking out of both sides of his mouth on energy. He nominated a woman for high office who wants to “bankrupt” oil and gas companies and now expects those same companies to pull his political chestnuts out of the fire by upping production?
Those companies will likely do what Biden asks because it’s always better to placate the lion than challenge him to a fight.
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