WASHINGTON, DC, Dec 5 — Beneath America lies a vast reserve of oil. Not so long ago the American Oil and Gas Reporter wrote, “The United States now holds the world’s largest recoverable oil reserve base–more than Saudi Arabia or Russia…The reserves data distinguish between reserves in existing fields and new projects, and potential reserves in recent discoveries and still undiscovered fields.”
So, why are we depleting our Strategic Petroleum Reserve [SPR] to the point that U.S. producers warn of an impending crisis? Why are we giving communist Venezuelans a chance to make big bucks by selling us its literally dirty oil to meet our needs?
Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, says the SPR is at its lowest level since 1987 all because President Biden sought to bring the price of gas down before the midterm elections. “The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, unfortunately, has become the strategic political reserve. And we have grave concerns about how it has been so politicized. This is for emergency purposes, not to lower gasoline prices during a time during a political season. I think doing this willy-nilly and doing it in a way that that doesn’t make sense for the market we’re in, we could be dealing with another major oil crisis here in the next few weeks,” is how he explained it to Maria Bartiromo on Fox News recently.
In an Opinion article published in the Washington Post recently, Marc Thiessen at the American Enterprise Institute points out that since Biden took office we’ve seen the biggest spike in gasoline prices in some three decades. It’s no secret that his war on gas is the primary cause of surging prices at the pumps but that wouldn’t serve him well going into the elections. So, he figured he could cover it up by releasing more and more of our SPF reserves. “If Biden cared about reducing gas prices in the long term, he would be doing everything in the White House’s power to increase domestic oil and gas production. He’s doing the opposite. Because higher gas prices are part of their plan to force Americans to abandon fossil fuels. Just as government deliberately raised the cost of cigarettes to curb smoking, Democrats want to raise gas prices to curb our use of fossil fuels.”
And now Mr. Biden has added insult to injury by letting the California-based Chevron petroleum company drill for oil in communist Venezuela. For one thing, in 2020, 2021 and this year the U.N. has issued reports that found the regime is guilty of crimes against humanity.
In addition, Venezuela’s heavy crude oil is so low in quality that few refineries in the world will take it. But soon after the Chevron deal was struck Forbes Magazine pointed out that when the president shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline on the first day of his presidency he blamed it on the heavy oil it would transport. It wasn’t good enough for us then but it is now.
“On that day, Biden chose to cancel the cross-border permit for the northern leg of TC Energy’s Keystone XL Pipeline with a stroke of his presidential pen. The decision was not made because TC Energy or its partners had been found to be in violation of U.S. law or regulations governing pipelines – no such finding had been made…The decision to cancel the already half-completed pipeline and billions of dollars of already sunk investments was made, according to Biden and his own spokespersons at the time, to send a message that the heavy grade of crude oil the pipeline was designed to bring in from Canada was somehow more polluting and less desirable than other grades of oil for use in the United States. That was the argument that had been mounted against the project since early in first term of the Obama administration, in which Biden served as Vice President.”
As one analysis put it, Biden and his cronies are not only fighting the development of our vast petroleum resources; they are, in fact, economically punishing middle and low income Americans by fueling inflation. It’s not just they’re excessive spending, they have taken actions clearly intended to force the steep rise in gas and energy prices and the derivative impact upon food prices.