Once again, the Biden administration is content to allow ruthless dictators to sell their oil, while it won’t allow the U.S. to drill for and refine its own oil.
On Saturday, the U.S. granted an expanded license to Chevron to resume oil production — in Venezuela.
“The decision allows Chevron to revive existing oil projects in the U.S.-sanctioned country and bring new oil supplies to refiners in the United States,” reports Reuters. “However, it restricts cash payments to Venezuela, which could reduce the amount of oil available to Chevron.”
The move obviously benefits the Maduro regime in Venezuela by boosting its economy.
🧵JUST IN. The U.S. has granted a new license to Chevron, allowing it to expand ops in Venezuela. This could represent a step toward allowing Vzla to re-enter the internat’l oil market, something Maduro desperately needs to improve the economy.
Some caveats/explanation below… pic.twitter.com/HEg1JrTvOG
— julieturkewitz (@julieturkewitz) November 26, 2022
The terms of the license prevent Venezuela’s state-run oil company PDVSA from benefiting from the sale of Chevron oil; instead, the money will go to a humanitarian fund. The deal also blocks Chevron from helping Venezuela start new oil fields. The license expires in six months, but the U.S. will renew it monthly once that six-month period ends; however, the administration reserved the right to rescind the license at any time.
“This action reflects longstanding U.S. policy to provide targeted sanctions relief based on concrete steps that alleviate the suffering of the Venezuelan people and support the restoration of democracy,” read a statement from the U.S. Treasury Department.
The catch is that there’s no guarantee that the Venezuelan regime will go for the license since it contains so many restrictions.
“There is not a big incentive in the short term,” said Francisco Monaldi of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. “We’ll see how Maduro’s government reacts to it and how many cargoes will be assigned to Chevron after.”
All of this comes on the same day that representatives of the Venezuelan government and opposition leaders conducted talks in Mexico City to discuss a United Nations effort to benefit the Venezuelan people — something that wouldn’t be necessary if Marxists weren’t in charge of the country. The Mexico City talks could also determine how the Venezuelan regime responds to the license from the U.S. government.
It’s yet another example of the Biden administration’s energy policies benefiting other nations, particularly those that are hostile to the U.S., at the expense of America’s domestic production.
I’m old enough to remember when the U.S. was energy independent. We produced our own plentiful oil. Prices were low, and the industry created thousands of jobs for hard-working Americans. Those days are a thing of the past.
The Biden administration killed U.S. energy independence from day one, destroying jobs and jacking up energy prices. Sure, these policies weren’t the sole source of the inflation that’s plaguing us right now, but they did serve as the steroids that beefed it up.
At the same time, these are the same people who expect hardworking Americans who sometimes struggle to make ends meet to give up their gas-powered cars for expensive electric vehicles. Remember, it’s so simple to “ride on sunshine” when you buy an electric car, the average price of which is $64,249 as of October 2022.
“The average starting price for the top 10 best-selling electric cars in America is $60,500, but all except the Tesla models are subject to dealer markups,” reports Justin Fischer at YAA,” (emphasis in the original), who also points out that “more drivers are getting squeezed into $1,000/month car payments” for electric vehicles.
Add to that the fact that everything we’re paying for is getting more expensive in part because of fuel costs, and the administration’s license to Chevron to produce in Venezuela is even more maddening.
The truly simple solution is to restore America’s energy independence, but why would the Biden administration do that when it could prop up a Marxist nation instead?
Story cited here.
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