Biden’s oil and fuel coverage makes about as a lot sense as his Afghan coverage – Watts Up With That?
From the South China Morning Mail
Biden has done everything possible to stifle U.S. oil and gas producers in the name of fighting climate change – while pleading with Saudi Arabia, Russia and others to increase oil production to keep pump prices down
Tilak K. Doshi
Published: 21:15, 29 August 2021
Few would disagree with former US Vice President Mike Pence’s view that President Joe Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan is “a foreign policy humiliation our country has not seen since the hostage-taking in Iran.”
In his memoir, Robert Gates, who served as Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration, wrote that Biden “has been wrong on almost every major foreign policy and national security issue for the past four decades.”
It seems that the disaster in Afghanistan is just the latest mistake in a foreign policy balance sheet filled with it.
In the past few days, the world has seen news of the chaos at Kabul Airport, with civilians clinging to US military planes to avoid retaliation from the victorious Taliban.
US diplomats, stunned by the speed of the Afghan military’s surrender to the Taliban fighters, were reduced to begging the militant leadership, with financial aid and other incentives, not to storm the US embassy in Kabul – the embassy that had hoisted the LGBT rainbow flag to celebrate the Pride Month in June and demonstrate America’s commitment to “inclusivity”.
The full extent of the US debacle was revealed when the State Department admitted that the Biden administration “cannot provide safe passage” for thousands of trapped Americans to travel to Kabul airport.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair criticizes US withdrawal from Afghanistan
But the Biden government suffered further humiliation earlier this month when OPEC, the cartel of oil producers, unceremoniously rejected its request to release more oil in world markets.
Reuters quoted Opec sources as saying there was “no need to release additional oil any faster” and there was “no concern that the planned schedule for the increases would leave demand unsatisfied”.
The US National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, had criticized major Opec + oil producers, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, for “insufficient crude oil” [oil] Production stages “. “At a critical moment in global recovery, this is just not enough,” he said.
While this request was intended as a means of lowering oil prices in order to aid global economic recovery, it is no secret that the Biden administration is deeply concerned about this clearly American political barometer of the president’s popularity – the price of fuel.
Senate approval of the $ 3.5 trillion budget to expand Medicare, tax credits and climate initiatives suggests that the US inflation outlook may not be “temporary”.
Bob McNally, one of Washington’s closer watchers of energy affairs, said, “The Biden administration is under tremendous political pressure due to inflation, with galloping gasoline being the most publicly visible and annoying.”
How can inflation be temporary if the supply chain disruption persists? 23. August 2021
US fuel prices hit their highest level since 2014 this summer. It is a “staggering contradiction” that Sullivan submitted his inquiry just two days after the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published his sixth assessment addressed to Opec +, in which he warns of a point of no return. Climate crusade to quickly ban the use of fossil fuels worldwide.
The United States, along with the European Union, stands in lockstep with UN Secretary General António Guterres, who said the IPCC report was nothing more than “a red code for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening and the evidence is irrefutable.
Global warming dangerously close to spiraling out of control: US climate report
But the contradiction goes deeper: The Biden government pleads with Saudi Arabia, Russia and other producers to increase oil production while doing their best to stifle their domestic oil and gas industry to meet the demands of the Green New Deal Meet the Democratic Party base.
The US remains the world’s largest producer of oil and gas, but Biden has done everything in his power to stifle domestic producers in the name of fighting climate change. After taking office, he immediately issued a series of executive orders to reverse his predecessor’s “energy independence” strategy.
With the stroke of a pen, he revoked the Keystone XL pipeline to ship oil from Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast, stopped oil leasing in Alaska, stopped state oil and gas leases, and cynically invoked the endangered species Act to Block Energy Resource Development on Private Land in the West.
Two weeks ago, the Biden government challenged a federal judge’s decision in June to block the interior ministry’s break in oil and gas leasing on public land and bodies of water. Oil and gas industry officials doubt the government intends to comply with the court ruling as no lease sales are planned despite the court order.
Given the climate pressure, oil producers in the Middle East and Russia will benefit July 1, 2021
Benjamin Zycher, another avid analyst on the US energy scene, succinctly stated that “the Biden government is okay with fossil fuel production as long as it takes place overseas.”
While the political incoherence in Washington is nothing new, Zycher continues: “It is still something special to see the Biden administration simultaneously and simultaneously pursuing new restrictions on US fossil fuel production as a central part of its ‘climate’ policy tries to avoid the negative price effects of this production stance ”.
The dysfunctional stance of the Biden administration of begging foreign producers to boost oil exports while doing their best to hamper America’s oil and gas industry goes without saying. The administration, it seems, was hoisted by its own petard.
Tilak K. Doshi is an energy consultant and author of “Singapore in a Post-Kyoto World: Energy, Environment and the Economy”
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