In a desperate measure because of 79-year-old President Joe Biden’s failed energy policy, the president encouraged Senators on both sides of the aisle to sue Saudi Arabia and OPEC for cutting oil production to the United States by 2 million barrels a day. Once Biden took office he cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline bringing fracked oil from Hardesty, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, creating a death blow to the U.S. oil fracking industry. Biden acquiesced to his party’s radical left, let by 32-year-old Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose Green New Deal promised viable alternatives to fossil fuels. Under 76-ytear-old President Donald Trump, the fracking industry was going gangbusters, leaving the U.S. the leader petroleum exporting. In a just over a year-and-half, the U.S. has run out of oil, after Biden decided to boycott Russian oil after the Feb. 24 Ukraine invasion.
Biden’s decisions to stop the Keystone XL pipeline and ban oil drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve [ANWR], created oil industry shortages that had Biden groveling July 15 before 36-year-old Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Biden vowed never to recognize Bin Salman for the Oct. 2, 2017 murder by Saudi agents of 59-year-old Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Once Biden’s energy policy and Ukraine War created energy shortages and skyrocketing prices, he pled with Bin Salman to raise oil production. Bin Salman showed no sympathy for Biden’s pleas, after getting slammed by the president and has backers for the last two years. Biden’s energy policy and Ukraine War hit the U.S. with a double-whammy, creating widespread shortages and skyrocketing prices, creating the worst inflation in the U.S. and Europe in over 40 years.
Biden takes zero responsibility for any of his abysmal decisions, especially to reverse the Trump-era energy independence policy, making it more difficult for the fracking industry to remain profitable. Now the nation under Biden is stuck with record energy prices with greater dependence than ever to Saudi Arabia and other OPEC oil producers. Biden said May 18, ready and willing to start buying oil from Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro. Trump gave Maduro’s main opposition leader Juan Guaido much support, though did not commit U.S. troops to toppling Maduro. Maduro succeeded the late Hugo Chavez, a communist revolutionary who plundered oil-rich Venezuela into one of South America’s most impoverished countries. Immigration to the U.S. from Venezuela dramatically increased under Maduro’s leadership, despite Biden now desperate enough to do business with Venezuela.
Biden’s decisions on energy policy turned an energy-independent country now into an energy-thirsty country unable to supply enough petroleum and refined products to meet U.S. interests. ”What Saudi Arabia did to help [Russian President Putin] continue to wage his despicable, vicious war against Ukraine will long be remembered by Americans,” said 72-year-old Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Schumer was the Senate’s architect of sabotaging Trump’s energy independence strategy, now wants to join 89-year-old Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in suing Saudi Arabia and OPEC. How foolish are Democrats and Republicans believing Ocaso-Cortez’s Cool-Aid that the U.S. could do without fossil fuels. Driving the worst inflation in 40 years, Biden’s Russian oil embargo, while accounting for 5% of U.S. oil imports, drove inflation and recession around the globe.
Can you imagine Biden begged Bin Salman to increase Saudi oil production because of his Russian oil embargo and failure to continue the oil fracking industry? ‘OPEC and its partners have ignored President Biden’s pleas for increased output, and now they are colluding to reduce production and further raise global prices,” Grassley said, in the most illogical, foolish analysis imaginable. Grassley knows that the U.S. under Trump enjoyed energy independence, didn’t need Saudi, Russian or Venezuelan oil. “We should at least be able to hold them accountable for their unfair price fixing,” Grassley said, knowing that it’s up to every country to set its own energy policy. OPEC has a right to cut oil production to save the price of oil that been plummeting over the last month, down to $89 barrel. Attempts to sue Saudi Arabia or OPEC are preposterous when each country sets its own energy policy.
Biden has so many failures in economic and foreign policy they’re too numerous to list, not least of which is his proxy war against the Russian Federation. No matter how much you back Ukraine, it’s not advisable for Biden to go to war against the Kremlin, thinking he’d topple Putin. What’s more clear that ever is that Biden has been buried by an avalanche of domestic and foreign policy problems, leaving it too numerous to fix in his first four years. Suing Saudi Arabia and OPEC only makes a bad situation worse for the U.S. Biden’s only way out is to approve the Keystone XL pipeline and revive the fracking industry, reeling under today’s burdensome regulations. Getting the U.S. energy independent at the earliest possible time would be the best move for the U.S. and its allies. Only by spurning Ocasio-Cortez and her ilk can Biden start to fix the current energy crisis—something highly unlikely.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
