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Soaring gasoline prices (they’re up 49 percent since President Biden took office) are due to “Putin’s price hikes,” claims Biden. But last I checked, Putin wasn’t stateside canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline, pursuing efforts to end federal oil and gas leasing programs, and careening our country toward more Covid-like lockdowns, social isolation, supply chain shortages, and another summer crime wave.
A brief recap of Biden’s oil and gastastrophe: in January 2021, during his first days in office, the president revoked the Keystone Pipeline permit and issued an executive order that, in his own typically eloquent words, directed the “Secretary of the Interior to stop issuing new oil and gas leases on public lands and offsh- — and offshore waters, wherever possible. We’re going to review and reset the oil and gas leasing program.”
Canceling the Keystone Pipeline — again — meant squashing an estimated 11,000 American jobs, $1.6 billion in pay, and 700,000 barrels of oil a day, per RealClearPolicy. The company trying to build the pipeline is suing the government for $15 billion in damages.
During his campaign, Biden promised to put an end to oil and gas drilling leases on public lands. It’s not as simple as a shaky swipe of Joe’s pen, however. This February, a district court judge ruled in favor of Louisiana, several other states, and energy-related industries alleging the Biden administration’s use of “the social cost of carbon” to cancel leases is “a power grab designed to manipulate America’s entire federal regulatory apparatus.” The Supreme Court, however, last month gave the Biden administration the green light to continue its moratoriums.
The Obama/Biden years of “hope and change” have devolved into what CNBC describes as “delays and uncertainty.” In April, the Department of the Interior announced it would continue “significantly reformed onshore oil and gas lease sales,” to the ire of both environmentalists and energy suppliers. Greenies consider the move an “ugly betrayal” of Biden’s campaign promise, while the American Petroleum Institute told Fox News they’re worried the reforms will add “new barriers to increasing energy production, including removing some of the most significant parcels.”
No one expects Biden to speak coherently, but his contradictions are striking, even for him. As president, he said, “No one is going to build another oil or gas-fired electric plant. They’re going to build one that is fired by renewable energy.” Biden has also bragged, “Even amid the pandemic, companies in the United States pumped more oil during my first year in office than they did during my predecessor’s first year.”
Put simply: Biden can’t please anyone. No form of fossil fuel use is ever acceptable for green energy activists, and our nation’s energy companies won’t be able to keep up with demand with “an 80 percent reduction from nominated acreage” in federal drilling leases.
Biden’s dithering on energy production will bring about another Covid summer 2020. Back in March, an American Automobile Association (AAA) survey found “two-thirds of Americans felt gas prices were too expensive at $3.53 per gallon.” The average price for a gallon of gas has now topped $5.
That same survey also found, “If gas were to reach $5.00…three-quarters said they would need to adjust their lifestyle to offset the spike at the pump,” and 80 percent of those Americans said they would drive less.
People are still able to walk to local restaurants, the movies, public social events, and so forth, which is great if you live in center-city or in the middle of a small town. But how practical is that in the suburbs or rural places? And what of family reunions, summer weddings, weekend trips to visit Grandma? (So help me if this impedes my ability to mow the lawn!) Diesel shortages are also affecting bus companies, so there goes the whole “I’ll just use public transport” idea.
Airline tickets are up 25 percent. The price of jet fuel is climbing higher and faster than Tom Cruise in Top Gun. This also means freight costs are through the roof and will be passed onto the consumer. “The rising cost of fuel, especially diesel, means that anything transported on a truck, train or ship is affected,” reports CNBC. In its quarterly update released in May, Amazon noted this eye-watering statistic:
The cost to ship an overseas container has more than doubled compared to pre-pandemic rates, and the cost of fuel is approximately one and a half times higher than it was even a year ago.
Social isolation? Check. Disrupted supply chain? Check. Crime spike? It’s coming: a Michigan police department announced it had exhausted its fuel funds and would be picking and choosing which calls to respond to in-person or over the phone. Patrolling will likely come to an end, too. A mobile healthcare provider in Fort Worth, Texas, told ABC how rising prices are “adversely affecting” emergency medical services (EMS), adding, “For rural EMS agencies that travel great distances, and have more challenging finances, the impact could be even greater.”
If first-responders are unable to travel to heart attacks, strokes, trauma victims, how many lives will be lost because Biden was more concerned with protecting the American burying beetle than American citizens?
