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Biden Administration Faces a New Crisis – Too Much Oil

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2023
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AMAC Exclusive – By David Lewis Schaefer

Pump Jack, Oil Well, In front of Longs Peak, Rocky Mountains

One major element of the inflation that has turned many voters against the Biden administration is the rise in gasoline and energy prices. With the Presidential election fewer than eleven months away, American oil fields “are gushing again,” as the New York Times reports, with “energy companies cranking out a record 13.2 million barrels a day, more than Russia or Saudia Arabia,” with the flow expected to increase still more in 2024 , thus lowering the price drivers pay at the pump – as well as the cost of heating oil (along with gas). (Even with the surge in production, gasoline prices remain 48% higher than when Biden entered office, when they stood at $2.39.) While Biden blamed Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine for causing the subsequent rise in prices, and recently boasted that they have returned to the level they were at just prior to the invasion, the fact remains that by December of the same year, they had risen to over $3 per gallon – months before the Ukraine invasion.  (In June, 2022, early in the invasion, they peaked at an average of $5.06 per gallon, the highest on record, after which they started to drop below $4.00.)

One might expect Biden and his supporters to be rejoicing at the latest news. Unfortunately, according to the Times, “the comeback in U.S. oil poses big risks,” since “more supply and lower prices could increase demand for fossil fuels” just as “world leaders” were meeting in early December under the auspices of the U.N. in Dubai (the financial capital of the United Arab Emirates, whose income – unlike that of tiny Dubai itself – depends chiefly on oil) were “straining to reach agreements that would accelerate the fight against climate change.” According to “scientists” cited by the Times, “the world is far from achieving the goals necessary to avoid the catastrophic effects of global warming, which is caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels like oil, natural gas, and coal.”

So, there’s the rub for Biden. Whom will he choose to satisfy – the bulk of the American population, whose economic status has been steadily worsened by the rising cost of fossil fuels, or his “green” supporters – fewer in number, but including many prominent rich liberals, along with young voters, for many of whom climate change has become a sort of religion, and whom his strategists have aimed to recruit for the campaign?

It’s not as if the President hasn’t tried to please the Greenies, having pledged at his inauguration to end oil and gas production on federal lands and waters. For instance, in September, The United States the Administration announced that it will hold just three offshore oil and gas lease sales over the next five years, the fewest in history,  the bare minimum that would allow the administration to continue holding lease sales for offshore wind structures under the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. (That legislation, negotiated with centrist Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin, and others, required that at least 60 million acres of offshore oil and gas leases be made available if the administration was to move ahead on its plan to develop 30 gigawatts of offshore wind farms by 2030.) And previously, Biden announced that it would bar oil drilling on millions of acres on Alaska’s North Slope and cancel previously issued oil leases on nearly half of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, America’s biggest public land holding in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Additionally, just prior to the summit, Vice President Kamala Harris (attending the conference in the President’s place) “highlighted” according to the Times “what she said was nearly $1 trillion in new spending” for “clean energy and climate efforts,” along with pledging the U.S. will send $ billion to the Green Climate Fund to assist poorer nations in reducing fossil fuel consumption. To top things off, the administration announced a crackdown on methane emissions that according to the Independent Petroleum Producers of America, which represents smaller oil companies, forecast will lead to the shutdown of 300,00 of America’s low-production wells, which will be unable to make the new requirements profitably. But the Greens are never satisfied and were denouncing the administration for authorizing a $3.4 million auction of oil and gas drilling rights in Wyoming just before the Dubai summit.

So Biden is torn, having “hectored oil companies to increase production” (and Saudi ruler Mohammad bin Salman, whom he had previously treated as a pariah) so as to drive consumer prices down, according to the Times, with John Kirby, spokesman for the Nation Security Council, explaining that the administration is committed to keeping energy prices down. And wind, sun, and electric cars aren’t going to do the trick in the foreseeable future, if ever. Moreover, reducing oil and gas prices really is an issue of national security, not only for the sake of preserving America’s energy independence from hostile foreign nations like Iran and Russia, but also to help our European allies overcome the energy shortage that hit them following Putin’s Ukraine invasion.

But blame for continuing high energy bills can’t be laid entirely at the feet of the national government. As Connecticut state senator Ryan Fazio pointed out in the December 3 New York Post, while electricity rates have risen substantially in recent years,” the U.S. and other developed nations will soon see “historic increases in electricity demand due to the electrification of vehicles and heating,” even as “base-load power plants … are slowly being replaced by less=reliable” wind turbines and solar panels. Some 36 states, Fazio reports, have Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) that require a certain percentage of power to be generated from “clean” energy sources – even as nearly all of them foolishly “exclude nuclear energy from RPS eligibility” and even limit, for no good reason, “the amount of hydropower that is eligible.” At least in Connecticut, where Democrats hold a majority in the legislature, a bipartisan compromise was reached to allow for more hydropower, and for any newly constructed nuclear plants to be eligible under the state’s RPS rules. If only, as Razio (a Republican) observes, this attitude had been adopted by state governments over the past few decades, when working nuclear plants in states like New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont were shut down, for no other reason than to please the environmental fanatics. (The Germans did something equally foolish under the influence of the Greens in shutting down their nuclear plants – even as neighboring France continues to draw most of its energy from such plants.)

As well-qualified students of climate issues like Steven E. Koonin, who served as undersecretary for science in President Obama’s energy department and is the author of Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters) and Bjorn Lomborg, head of the Copenhagen Consensus and author of several books on the subject including False Alarm: How Climate Change Panci Costs Us Trillions, and Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, have argued, the debate over the extent, the causes, the effects, and most effective and economical remedies for global warming, is far from over. And the democratic process, fortunately, compels even Democratic presidents to take account of popular demands that conflict with the claims of their most ideological supporters – as well as international security. It is long past time that someone in the Biden administration acknowledged this fact rather than papering it over.

Oh, but that’s not all. If the states, as Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis once put it, are “laboratories of democracy,” able to try out on a more limited level experiments in innovative policy that may come to be adopted elsewhere, sometimes the labs seem to have been taken over by mad scientists. This is notably the case in California, which (as Allysia Finley reports in the Wall Street Journal) has enacted a requirement, conforming to the demands of some Greens at the Dubai conference, that livestock and dairy farmers reduce their animals’ methane emissions (that is, from flatulence and manure) to 40 percent below their 2013 levels by 2030 – since livestock emissions are said to constitute up to 17 percent of global greenhouse emissions and 32 percent of its methane (said to be 28 times as powerful as carbon dioxide). The state, assisted by the Federal government, plans to achieve this goal through a complex scheme of regulations and subsidies, which are likely to drive many farmers out of business. (The California rules will have a nationwide effect, as Finley points out, since they apply to any livestock raised in the U.S. and then sold in the state.) The result will be to reduce the supply of meat and dairy products and raise their cost.

Are ordinary Americans likely to accept a mandatory conversion to veganism just to ward off the supposed impending climate doom, just as some may have to give up driving once electric cars, far more expensive than gasoline-powered ones, become the only vehicles available for sale? Or will the people finally use their ballots to say “enough! And too much!”?

David Lewis Schaefer, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, College of the Holy Cross.

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Frances
Frances
9 months ago

It is only a bad thing if you are trying to control and enslave the people. Lower prices allows more freedoms, but it seems the world’s so called leaders don’t like we the people to have freedoms.

Steven Alton
Steven Alton
9 months ago

We could become energy independent and not have to worry about foreign fuel but nobody wants that..(heaven forbid)and the younger generation doesn’t know diddily squat about anything that’s why they want us to become Herbivore’s !!!

Scott L
Scott L
9 months ago

‘…according to the Times, “the comeback in U.S. oil poses big risks,” since “more supply and lower prices could increase demand for fossil fuels” just as “world leaders” were meeting…’

They say that like it’s a bad thing.

Melinda
Melinda
9 months ago

If there is now too much oil, it seems like a good time to refill the Strategic Oil Reserve. Does Biden think lower gas prices will reelect him, after the fiascos he’s created for 3 years? I guess anything is possible.

anna hubert
anna hubert
9 months ago

I remember Carter huddling in his cardigan telling the nation to lower the thermostats instead of making sure we are oil independent Had he ran his farm the same way he’d be bankrupt in no time So he was not that stupid Instead of supplying and producing our own we keep kow towing to OPEC Is it any wonder Saudis and Dubai are building while we are crumbling Green tsars are not clamoring and alarming or protesting on that front It is only here they don’t shut up and of course are exempt from the lunacies they come up with

Pat R
Pat R
9 months ago

Is there anyone left in the government, or the US as a whole any more, with a modicum of common sense. The Greenies certainly do not, but as few as they are, they scream the loudest therefore getting what they want. When will politicians learn to ask questions like Vivik Ramaswamy? When will politicians realize their so-called decorum (being polite) is being used against them to destroy American freedom/liberty.
Again, I will continue screaming for TERM LIMITS. Why? Because those politicians are too comfortable with using their position to grow their personal wealth and truly care little about what matters to the US citizenry.

Richard Hollingshead
Richard Hollingshead
9 months ago

Biden should start replacing the strategic oil reserve he took out to lower gas prices and then sold some to CHINA, what a moron.

Robert Zuccaro
Robert Zuccaro
9 months ago

Gas is still $4.48/gal. in Washoe County, Nevada, so there’s a “glut”, I’m not seeing it. Surprised Biden isn’t building his own “Keystone pipeline”: but instead of pumping out oil, his version pumps it back in!

Theresa Coughlin
Theresa Coughlin
9 months ago

count me in the enough and too much crowd!

Myrna
Myrna
9 months ago

Enough and too much wins.

Stephen Russell
Stephen Russell
9 months ago

What TOO much oil. we dont Pump our own

Granny26
Granny26
9 months ago

Two days ago in CA I saw a couple stations at $5.79. Ridiculous.

Henry D
Henry D
9 months ago

I love reading these articles about our environmental CRISIS, and I cannot understand why NATURAL GAS is always included as being one of the three primary sources of global warming. Why is POPULATION not included??? I am sure the plants and dinosaurs poop contributed to the CO2 levels in their age and now we burn their residues to drive our cars and heat our homes BUT not until humans have come to dominate our planet’s land surface: cutting down the trees, covering the tillable surfaces with our homes, cities, and roads did the CO2 levels rise to 414ppm. Since this natural gas seems to be an issue since it is 28 times more leathal to our atmosphere we should be taking even larger steps to contain it and pipe it to our homes for cooking and heating, liquify it to run our cars (could not be more dangerous than an electric automobile battery), and by all means pipe this gas to our power plants to generate the required electricity. The Biden administration does not care that adding eight million more humans to our population would add to our food crisis, they will want a car of their own, they will want to cook and heat their homes, they will want to have children too. Please someone besides me “do the math”, this is a one-way street to becoming like our sister planet Venus. STOP subsidizing having children with tax credits, STOP the illegal immigration into this country we already have too many people now that our economy can support.

Fedup
Fedup
9 months ago

You can bet your “behind” that Joe will be on the campaign trail all next year (OK, from his basement) claiming that HIS economy is what has produced the lower oil prices. And guaranteed, many people will totally forget that it was HIS policies that caused the problem in the first place and completely buy into it. .

Lover of God and America!
Lover of God and America!
9 months ago

I personally think Texas ought to use its oil for Texas gasoline, thus bringing the price way down; the same with Texas Gas for heating!

Deborah Wood
Deborah Wood
9 months ago

Genesis 8:22

“While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”

King James Version (KJV)

Ted
Ted
9 months ago

For failed policies both current and ones set for the future look to California. I hope that the rest of the nation does not take after California polices, they are doomed if such practices are put in place. To make matters worse, the governor of California is thinking of running for president, you want bad foreign policies intermixed with terrible domestic policies he’s your ticket.

Randy
Randy
9 months ago

Picture looks like Mount Meeker and Longs Peak in the background taken from Weld County, Colorado where we support and continue to see new oil and natural gas operations. America needs to support our farmers and maintain production of our natural resources. Unfortunately that is not the priority of the current administration.

Ray
Ray
9 months ago

AMAC needs an editor and a proofreader.

Gene
Gene
9 months ago

Refill the SPR!

Art Warmack
Art Warmack
9 months ago

Perhaps now with the abundance of home sourced oil, someone will be wise enough to say, “lets refill our strategic reserves for the off chance that one day we can actually use our military to defend ourselves. So far this nation has NEVER done that. Instead we have sought and/or manufactured conflicts to fatten the wallets of the elites and yes I am’including both “world wars”. The two “big ‘uns”, were manufactured conflicts just as were the smaller more manageable conflicts from Korea to current day Ukraine. These were manufactured for reasons varying from ending a depression to just plain greed. But in the Constitution there is made mention the true reason for having a military….to defend this nation from aggressors, someone attacking us. This is of course unlikely as most nations don’t behave like the US and go about “expanding democracy” (meaning in acuality spreading depraved social values). WE are the nation with 800+ foreign bases. WE are the nation with huge numbers of aircraft carriers, now obsolete but once were built for projecting dominance against countries that USED to not have access to modern tech. Modern tech which has led to those carriers now being little more than huge floating targets that even mouth breathers like Zelensky and his Ukraine can send to the bottom of the sea.
Who knows? Trudeau may go full Castro and Canada may attack us demanding all Americans become as vaginafied as are the Canadians. Or perhaps Mexico could invade just to make drug trafficking more efficient with a promise to have a “red light district in every town across the nation”.
Ya never know……someday we may actually need the military for something other than to futher enlarge the waistline of Lloyd Austin, the worlds fattest former General, former executive of Raytheon and now Americas most morbidly obese Defense Secretary.

R.M. 'Zeb' Zobenica
R.M. 'Zeb' Zobenica
9 months ago

Several years ago, an accusation was leveled that I was one of about twenty people on the planet that didn’t accept anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Sadly, our number was reduced with the death of that intellectual giant, Dr. Michael Crichton. In his writings, he “likens the atmosphere to a football field. The goal line to the 78 yard-line contains nothing but nitrogen. Oxygen fills the next 21 yards to the 99 yard-line. The final yard, except for four inches, is argon, a wonderfully mysterious inert gas useful for putting out electronic fires. Three of the remaining four inches is crammed with a variety of minor, but essential, gases like neon, helium, hydrogen and methane. And the last inch? Carbon dioxide. One inch out of a hundred-yard field! At this point I like to add, if you were in the stands looking down on the action, you would need binoculars to see the width of that line. And the most important point-how much of that last inch is contributed by man-made activities? Envision a line about as thin as a dime standing on edge. Are you still worried about the dangers of CO2?”
 
By the time they’re in elementary school, kids in Minnesota link the seasons, warmth and cold, grass and snow, and hours of daylight and darkness to the sun…that wonderful combination camp stove and lantern in the sky. Their observations are empirical. They know nothing about the internal and external physical, chemical, and biological influences exerted upon the planet. From the far reaches of space… cosmic rays. From our solar system…variances in solar output, solar magnetic influences/solar wind, earth-sun orbital variations (see: Milutin Milankovich), obliquity, earth axial tilt. Earth planetary forces…plate tectonics, earthquakes, volcanism, ocean current gradients, earth magnetic field variations. Toss in the secondary effects… hurricanes, tornadoes, straight winds, tsunamis, flooding, lightning-caused fires, methane from termites and rice paddies, ruminant flatulence, bacterial and fungal ‘outgassing’ during the decomposition of organic material. The kids keep it simple…more sun means more light and more warmth; it is cooler in the shade; snow always disappears first on the sunny side of the street. 
 
By the time they start studying science, they’re exposed to a few facts.
 
Matter is neither created nor destroyed, only changed in form.
The geologic age of planet earth is 4.54 billion years old. (4.54×10^9).
Homo sapiens is 60-100,000 years on the planet. (1.00×10^5).
Industrial revolution man is 250 years old. (2.50×10^2). 
In the Northern Hemisphere, it is hotter down south, colder up north; hotter in the afternoon; colder (and darker) at night.
 
How is it possible, they ask, that, in a fraction (0.000000055 or 0.0000055%) of earth time, ‘industrial revolution man’, by keeping warm, planting crops, driving to work, benefiting from AC power, by just going about his normal business, has endangered the survivability of the planet? How is it possible that a trace gas, CO2, measured in ppm (385ppm), utilized by plants as raw material for photosynthesis, exhaled by mammals, absorbed in H2O, incorporated into shellfish, and functioning as one of nature’s buffering systems, might be responsible for an earth calamity? Further study reveals that 700 million years ago the earth was a giant ball of ice. Ten thousand years ago, the land upon which their hometown is built was under a mile-deep glacier. What happened to that ice? What caused the warming? Why did the climate change? Greenland was once green. The oceans were once 500 feet shallower. The Sahara was a pasture. The CO2 concentrations of the atmosphere    are the same in the south and in the north; the same at midday and at midnight.
 
As the kids mature, they recognize an important distinction in the climate-alarmists’ position. The climate-change gurus are advocates for Gaia. They allege that ‘man’ is making Gaia sick. More specifically, it is ‘western man’, in his wild pursuit of the ‘good life’, that imperils Gaia. Other men, living more modestly, in greater harmony with Gaia, are not held responsible. In their nobility, these people are deemed worthy of compensation drawn from the bank accounts of the profligate. Furthermore, the kids wonder why the battery of computer models, currently projecting impending doom, are unable to replicate the conditions of the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age when using their proxy data?
 
Among those kids who aspire to the status of ‘philosopher kings’, fundamental ‘truths’ began to coalesce. Man, alone among the species of the Earth, has moved beyond the elemental functions of life…eating, peeing, pooping, sleeping, fighting, copulating. Man is special. Only Man has been granted knowledge of the Creator and spends time pondering such things. He has been granted dominion over God’s creation. No other species, visible or invisible, has philosophers, politicians, healers, dreamers, farmers, plumbers, pilots, musicians, geeks, nerds, or professional athletes.
No other species has mortgages, retirement accounts, medical insurance, drives automobiles, flies space craft, or explores the oceans and the cosmos.
 
Then, there are other kids who may choose to agree with Professor Stephen W. Hawking…that on a planetary scale, man is merely ‘pond scum’.
 
Regardless, every decision made by Man about these matters should be assessed only in terms of whether ‘it is in Man’s (or pond scum’s) best interest’…that is, anthropocentric.
If it is found to be in Man’s interest, it should follow that it will likely be in the interest of the rest of the species and the planet.
Should Man err, he disappears. The planet will, without pause, consume his remains and move forward…as history has recorded.

The aftermath of a disaster while the flag hangs.
Governor Tim Walz giving a speech at a Podium in September 2024
Fema.gov Disasters USA Government home page under magnifying glass.

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