RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Biden administration is terminating the seven remaining oil leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). These seven leases represented the last vestiges of the Trump era of America’s energy dominance. With the termination of these seven leases, the Biden administration has signaled to the world that it’s going to kill affordable energy for Americans along with U.S. energy dominance in the name of “saving our planet.” And just what does president Biden think he’s saving our planet from? “Climate change,” of course.

Thanks to Biden’s short-sighted decision, energy analysts report that the United States will produce 140,000 barrels of oil per day less than previously. This means that American energy consumers can anticipate a concomitant increase in their average fuels costs. Not surprisingly, the ecochondriacs who dominate America’s political, media, and educational sectors today rarely take into account basic economics. In this case, the law of supply and demand. The cut in American energy production will force the U.S. to rely more heavily on unstable foreign sources of fossil fuels, such as those in Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela.

In September, the government of Saudi Arabia surprised the world when it chose to cut oil production. This move has spiked the price of oil on the world market. Many energy experts are projecting that the cost of oil could spike to $100 per barrel or more. Meanwhile, Russia, another major fossil fuel producer, has also decided to cut production. Tack on increasing demand from China, the world’s second-largest economy with one of the largest middle-classes in the world, and you’ve got the perfect storm of energy insecurity for an America thanks to the radical Biden administration climate agenda.

Who benefits from the increased price of oil? The very regimes that the United States has problems with. Although the Saudis are a longtime regional partner in the Middle East, the U.S.-Saudi relationship has long been fraught, even before 9/11. The Biden administration has become especially antagonistic toward the Kingdom over their human rights abuses. Yet, by cutting American domestic energy production, Biden is ensuring the U.S. will be even more dependent on this unstable, even distasteful ally.

When asked by Western media why he was supporting the unilateral cut to oil production, Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman explained that he was cutting oil production to boost prices because he was, “trying to get Saudi Arabia on the right track.” Since 2018, when he took Saudi ARAMCO, the nation’s oil producer, public to raise capital for his’ “Vision 2030” program, Salman has been trying to diversify the oil-based Saudi economy to ensure that his kingdom can escape the supposed “resource curse” that befalls most oil rich nations, especially in the developing world. To sustain that plan, however, he needs the global price of oil stay high.

Cui bono: Mohammed bin Salman.

Elsewhere, an embattled Russian Federation has consented to cut its oil production by 300,000 bpd. That, along with Saudi Arabia, is helping to drive up the global price of oil to stratospheric levels. In Russia’s case, the higher the price of oil on the global market, the stronger their economy will be. That’s important because the Biden administration has decided to risk nuclear armageddon with the Russians over the fate of Ukraine. Russia’s primary economic driver is the nation’s massive fossil fuel production capabilities.

Generally, when the price of energy is relatively high on the global market, as it has been during Biden’s presidency, Russia has greater wealth to invest in their war machine. Each time the Russian Federation has become militarily assertive with its neighbors, whether it be their attack on neighboring Georgia in 2008 or their annexation of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine in 2014, it corresponded to unusually high prices in the global oil market, causing Biden and his fellow Democrats to fixate on a resurgent Russian threat.

Yet, they have failed to understand how their obsession with a fictive “climate change and subsequent decision to cut American energy production has empowered Russia’s military expansion. If Biden truly wanted to curb Russian revanchism in their Near-Abroad, then he’d be doing everything in his power to increase American domestic energy production, alleged consequences to the environment be damned.

Finally, the administration’s failed energy and foreign policies  have further empowered China. Because Biden has worked assiduously to isolate Russia on the world stage over their invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russians have been forced to sell their massive oil stores to oil-hungry nations, such China, at a discount. Meanwhile, Biden’s attacks on Saudi Arabia over human rights violations have created a serious opening that Beijing has exploited to gain greater access to Mideast oil. And let’s not even get started on how Biden’s “green energy” policies empower China at American expense.

Oil for the lamps of China.

The interplay between the Left’s “climate change” obsession and increases in American insecurity on the world stage is little understood. It would be far better for Biden to abandon his cause of trying to end “climate change” by punishing American energy consumers and forcing a costly shift to less efficient Green energy sources; instead he should follow the example of his predecessor and rapidly expand domestic energy production by granting as many drilling leases in American territory as possible.

Biden could also make it easier for American fossil-fuel producers to sell their oil at cost to the American people, as the Saudis and Russians do for their people, while offering the excess to the rest of the world. Instead, everything he’s done has been backward –by design.