President Joe Biden can bring down gas prices tomorrow. He’s choosing not to. It’s all part of the plan.
The official White House line for record-breaking prices at the pump remains fixated on blaming the Organisation of Petroleum-Exporting Countries over its refusal to ramp up output as the administration shuts down domestic production.
“Gas prices relate to a foreign policy initiative,” Biden said during a CNN town hall last month. “And that’s because of supply being withheld by OPEC.”
On Friday, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm laughed at the idea there was anything the administration could do to bring down the cost of gas, once again placing blame entirely on OPEC.
“What is the Granholm plan to increase oil production in America?” asked Bloomberg host Tom Keene.
“That is hilarious,” she said as she tossed her head back with laughter while Americans cope with gas prices hitting all-time highs compounded by inflation.
“[I] would that I had the magic wand on this,” Granholm said, pretending that she doesn’t in the form of deregulation. “Oil is a global market. It is controlled by a cartel. That cartel is called OPEC, and they made a decision yesterday that they were not going to increase beyond what they were already planning.”
Not only is the administration’s excuse a cheap cop-out from the crisis it created, it’s an insult to the more than 11 million Americans whose jobs comprise the U.S. oil and gas industry as the White House shops overseas for resources its strangling at home.
Gas prices are up more than 60 percent from a year ago, according to AAA travel agency, after sustaining a painful and consistent increase over Biden’s first 10 months in office. The high cost of gas is sending ripple effects across the entire economy with more expensive transportation meaning more expensive goods, since they’re virtually all shipped at least some distance.
Worse, American heating bills are on pace to soar this winter, with the Energy Information Administration (EIA) projecting in October a majority of U.S. households are estimated to pay 30-50 percent more than last year. Those reliant on propane heating, primarily in rural areas, the northeast and northern plains will be hardest hit, with a 94 percent price spike from last year’s six-month season. Such an increase is likely to amount to hundreds more in heating costs with the poorest households to suffer most.
President Biden is entirely responsible for the nation’s surging power prices, with no end to the rise in sight and no plan to stop it.
“At this time, I don’t have anything new to share,” admitted White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday, after Biden made the same concession in prime time less than a month ago.
A plan to bring down prices however, would be counterproductive to the president’s goals of phasing out fossil fuels, a primary centerpiece of his 2020 campaign. Biden could bring down gas prices tomorrow and ward off the looming energy crisis this winter by immediately backing off his war against the industry he’s pledged to destroy.
From day one President Biden has done everything in his power to suppress home oil and gas production leading to the price shocks Americans are coping with today. Biden took an axe to the Keystone XL Pipeline, put pressure on Wall Street to cease investment on new projects, banned drilling in the Arctic, and suspended new oil and gas leases on federal land.
Auctions for new leases are still not rescheduled to take place until spring, only put back on the calendar after a federal judge ruled the leasing ban illegal. The wait has hampered operators in the capital-intensive industry to drill with the availability of new nearby leases on the horizon a prerequisite to responsible investment. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has even hinted at limits on extraction.
At the same time, Biden gave the green light to a new Russian pipeline into Germany, repeatedly begged OPEC to raise output, and demanded American oil producers lower costs after the administration’s cascade of expensive regulation. It’s not that Biden has no plan to bring down power prices, it’s that Biden is implementing a plan to keep them going higher.
The administration admitted this week another pipeline supplying more than half of Michigan’s propane needs is on the chopping block, even as propane users face the steepest spike in heating prices this winter.
“The Army Corps of Engineers is preparing an environmental impact to look through this,” Jean-Pierre said in a Monday briefing. A new environmental assessment under this administration is often a precursor to project termination.
Last week, Biden threw another wrench at the oil and gas industry with new methane rules unveiled while in Scotland for the global summit on climate change. The new regulations aim to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide by 30 percent before 2030. With economic incentives already in place to capture methane, the industry has cut its emissions 23 percent over the last 30 years even as oil and gas production has increased.
“It’s hard to draw a straight line to any particular regulation to higher prices,” Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Denver-based industry trade group Western Energy Alliance, told The Federalist. “[A] combination of policies meant to constrain oil and gas when taken together will raise prices for consumers… Were [Biden] to actually back off some of this regulation, it would send a really strong signal to producers and Wall Street.”
Higher prices coincide with the environmental left’s strategy to eliminate fossil fuels altogether. Just as taxes on smoking encourages smokers to quit, higher power prices encourage Americans to use less fuel.
Biden nominee to lead a branch of the Treasury Department, Saule Omarova, admitted in a resurfaced video the plan is to make American energy producers “go bankrupt.”