America No Longer Identifies as Energy Independent
“When it comes to the gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it’s over, we’ll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over,” Biden said earlier this month.
Biden used the word transition to suggest a temporary change that we’ll soon get over. We certainly have been going through a transition, but it began when he took office, and it’s been uglier than Richard Levine’s transition to Rachel Levine.
And that’s saying a lot.
Under Trump, the United States was producing over 13 million barrels of oil a day, and now we’re only producing closer to 11.5 million. Biden inherited a country that was energy independent thanks to Donald Trump and his small-government approach to energy: By killing ridiculous regulations, domestic oil companies were able to increase supply, and by the end of 2018, the United States was exporting more oil than it imported for the first time in 70 years.
Biden managed to screw that up in less than a year.
One of the first things Joe Biden did upon taking office was to kill the Keystone XL pipeline, and Biden issued a moratorium on new oil and gas drilling leases, which, naturally, reduced supply and drove up prices. His actions received bipartisan criticism. Biden was even slammed by a union that had foolishly endorsed him in 2020 despite his longstanding opposition to the pipeline. Since then, gas prices have gone up, which has increased the prices of goods and labor. At first, the White House blamed seasonal fluctuations for the increase in gas prices, then he tried to blame OPEC. Earlier this year, he tried to blame Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which was even more pathetic because gas prices had been rising steadily for over a year prior to that. Unfortunately for him, even his staunchest allies in the media weren’t buying that excuse, and polls showed that Americans weren’t falling for it, either—and they still aren’t. Even CNN can’t deny the real reason gas prices have been going in the direction they’ve been going. “The U.S. is not producing as much [oil] as it used to…so prices have nowhere to go but up.”
When Biden took office, America identified as energy independent. But Biden decided he was going to transition America to less reliable “green” energy, and let Americans suffer the consequences. Despite claiming to be concerned about the plight of Americans dealing with record-high gas prices, earlier this month, Biden’s Department of the Interior canceled an oil and gas lease sale for over 1 million acres in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, citing a “lack of industry interest.” Uh-huh.
So, gas prices have continued to go up. In fact, every state in the union is paying more than $4.12 a gallon—and seven states are paying over $5.00 a gallon. The average nationwide price for a gallon of gas hits a new record high pretty every day now.
Biden’s transitioning of America away from energy independence has been deliberate, but he still tries to avoid being blamed for the heavy toll his policies have had on average Americans.
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