Joe Biden’s Love-Hate Relationship with Oil

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February 28, 2023

On the last Friday of January, the Republican House of Representatives passed a bill aimed at curtailing the president’s ability to exploit the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for partisan ends.  If enacted, the bill would require that, except in a “severe energy supply disruption,” any drawdown of the reserve would need to be accompanied by a plan to open up new federal lands for oil and gas leases “by the same percentage as the percentage of petroleum … that is to be drawn down.”

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President Biden has already made clear that he would veto the bill if it made it to his desk, which it won’t, because the Democrats control the Senate.

Why do Republicans think a bill like this is necessary?  Because over the last two years, Biden has repeatedly timed selloffs from the oil reserve for political reasons, especially in the run-up to last November’s elections, when his party was trying extra hard to make sure that oil and gasoline were cheap.  By now, the reserve has shrunk to 380 million barrels, its lowest level since 1984.

And what is to be blamed for this?  According to Biden, it is the greed of the oil companies, who, in order to keep the price high, are pumping too little oil to meet America’s needs.  “It’s time for these companies to stop war profiteering,” he said in October, “meet their responsibilities in this country, and give the American people a break.”

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This is a bit odd, because before the present spike in the oil price, Democrats still thought that oil companies were evil and greedy…but mostly because they were destroying the climate by producing so much oil.  And when President Biden took office back in 2021, he acted accordingly, by re-entering the Paris Climate Accord, halting oil and gas leasing on federal lands, and canceling the construction permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, all within eight days of being sworn in.

Democrats’ relationship with petroleum, and with fossil fuels in general, is complicated.  They often run for office by saying that carbon emissions are the number-one threat to life on this planet, but, with a few exceptions, they still like to drive, and fly, and otherwise enjoy lifestyles that couldn’t exist without cheap energy.

So they try to split the difference.  They harass American energy-producers.  They ban drilling on public lands or in the Gulf of Mexico whenever their party is in office.  They support the laws that allow private environmental activists to jet around the country and sue the builders of pipelines, mines, and other energy infrastructure, forcing them to reopen their permitting process midway through construction, a process that can delay the projects by years and cost thousands of jobs.

But the wrath of the establishment left is reserved entirely for the producers of fossil fuels, the hardworking Americans who work long hours in coal mines or on drilling rigs to keep our economy supplied with its most essential resources.  They have no interest at all in going after the consumers of fossil fuels — not when Democrats know deep down that their own lifestyles depend just as heavily on fossil fuels as anyone else’s, and not when so many of the most profligate consumers of energy, like the 1,500 or so plutocrats who flew private jets to last month’s Davos conference, are hardcore progressives.

This is puzzling, because if you actually think that CO2 emissions are the number-one threat to human existence right now, then you should care at least as much about fossil fuel consumption as about fossil fuel production.  After all, a molecule of CO2 spewed out of the tail pipe of an American automobile (or out of the smokestack of an American power plant, or out of the exhaust plume of somebody’s private jet) is going to have the same atmospheric affects whether that carbon was originally mined orpumped in America or somewhere else.

And yet we never see anybody proposing to reduce emissions by imposing tariffs on imported fossil fuels — something that could at least be sold to economic nationalists on the right on the grounds that it would drive up the demand for American labor and reduce our country’s strategic dependence on potential foes.

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To repeat: Our ruling class have no interest at all in reducing America’s ability to consume fossil fuels, because they realize that their own way of life (and, for elected officials like Biden, their ability to stay in office) depends on keeping the oil flowing.  But they love to virtue-signal by harassing American oil and gas companies and putting American workers out of work.  So long as the imports keep flowing — so long as the new jobs go to Arab or Russian oilmen instead of to Americans — it’s all fine.

(And it’s worth noting that, even with sanctions in place, American reliance on foreign oil still helps Russia.  What is happening is that America is buying oil from the Middle East, while China and India buy oil from both the Middle East and Russia.  Any increases in American oil demand, including those caused by Biden’s hobbling of American oil production, will drive up the price of oil everywhere — and that includes the oil that India and China buy from Russia.  This is just how globalization works.)

Now, within the environmentalist coalition, there are a handful of people who have enough integrity to live their own lives as if carbon footprints mattered.  These people usually don’t own automobiles, and they prefer to get around by bicycle or public transit.  They live in small, easy-to-heat houses, eat mostly plants rather than meat, and are often into organic gardening or various old-timey handicrafts.

I have a lot of respect for people like that, even though I don’t always see eye to eye with them.  But I also know that, even among progressives, they are a small minority.

And I don’t have any respect at all for people who won’t change their own lifestyles, but who will talk long and loud about everyone else should change his — about how coal-miners should seek other employment, and how taxpayers should have to subsidize electric cars that will never be anything but status symbols for the rich, and how cattle ranchers should switch to raising edible bugs.

And as for people like Joe Biden — well, if your goal is to stop climate change, and if you think you can achieve that goal by putting Biden and people like him in power, then you are bringing a water pistol to the OK Corral.

Because Joe Biden, just like most other Democrats, only hates oil when hating oil means hating the producers of oil — i.e., the hardworking Americans, mostly on the political right, whose livelihood is endangered by Biden’s energy policies.

But there is no hate for the consumers of oil (especially foreign oil).  And when the time for virtue-signalling is over, and the Democrats remember that their own lifestyles, and their own chances of re-election, depend on keeping the oil flowing, then they will show that they love oil just as much as any of the executives at Exxon, Shell, or Saudi Aramco.

Twilight Patriot is the pen name for a young American who lives in Georgia, where he is currently working toward a graduate degree.  You can read more of his writings at his Substack.

Image: lalabell68 via Pixabay, Pixabay License.

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