Biden Must Prioritize American Energy Independence in Face of War, Rising Prices

Op-Ed

Energy is Russia's most powerful nonnuclear weapon. Still, President Joe Biden continues to make that weapon even stronger by waging war on American energy.

On his first day in office, Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline and stopped new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters. Then, he gave the green light to Putin's Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

These are the types of decisions that raised prices at the pump for Americans and empowered Russia's energy dominance in Europe, even though the White House will tell you otherwise.

Democrats last week did scramble to ban the U.S. purchase of Russian oil, though. Banning Russian energy imports is fine as far as it goes, which isn't very. The U.S. imports only 3% of its petroleum supply and less that 1% of coal from Russia. And it's a shame that it took the tragic invasion of Ukraine for Democrats to recognize the obvious.

So, while this ban may send an important message to Putin and the rest of the world -- that the U.S. is committed to isolating Russia from the global market -- it's well past time Biden started doing more to expand American energy production.

But Biden is going out of his way to avoid doing just that. Instead, his activist administration is seeking help from Putin's client in Venezuela and our estranged Saudi allies rather than U.S. shale producers. Shale producers can increase production twice as fast as Venezuelan oil companies, and the profits would go to American workers and shareholders rather than another dictatorship.

There's no reason to rely on dictators when we have cleaner cheaper energy in our own backyard. But rather than making substantive policy changes, Biden is only willing to offer political spins.

Last week, he stated it's "simply not try" that his administration is holding back domestic energy production. This messaging pivot is blatantly disingenuous, and it doesn't take an in-depth fact check to find the truth.

Biden cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have employed thousands of Americans and provided a crude oil source from Canada rather than Russia; cancelled oil and gas leasing on federal land; instructed federal agencies to investigate oil companies; and launched a regulatory assault on domestic energy production.

The White House is even so desperate that it's trying to blame oil companies for a lack of domestic energy production. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, in an attempt to shift the blame away from the president's policies, cited "9,000 approved oil leases that the oil companies are not tapping into currently."

First, this perverse argument relies on us believing that a drilling permit is the only thing needed for new oil and gas projects. That is not the case. Oil and gas production is a puzzle of leases, permits and rights of way. When Biden banned all new oil and gas leases on federal land, he took away a crucial piece of the puzzle.

Still, oil companies are doing everything they can to work with what they have. There are currently about 34,496 leases in effect. So, assuming Mrs. Psaki's number on nonproducing leases is accurate, oil companies are producing at a 75% utilization rate -- that's an all-time high. Clearly, domestic oil companies are producing as much as possible given Biden's guardrails.

There is not a single serious person who looks at Biden's actions over the last year and thinks the current energy crisis is the fault of America's producers instead of this radical administration.

The Ukraine crisis should be an inflection point that causes the White House to do an energy reset. Instead, the president says it "should motivate us to accelerate the transition to clean energy" and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. He is signaling that his environmental goals trump energy security and consumer prices.

Ukrainians, Americans and all the West will continue to suffer the consequences of that prioritization until the White House reverses its politically driven energy policies. The solution to our problem is American energy produced by American workers. Biden needs to find the political will to act on that reality, and he needs to find it fast.

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