Putin's Price Increase?

Hostile and economically illiterate Democrats pour more $7 a gallon gas on the fire.

When asked about high oil prices, alleged President Biden callously said, “Can’t do much right now… Russia is responsible.”

Failure is not just a condition. Failure, Inc. is the name of a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporate Democrat Party.

As if assigning something a Twitter hashtag makes it real, “Putin’s price increase” is just the latest in childishly stupid narratives emanating from Democrat cake holes in response to the crippling rise in energy costs.

Let us not forget, no matter how hard the media tries to memory hole it, Biden’s energy policy is working exactly as planned.

Biden:

• Said at a campaign rally in February of 2020, “We are going to get rid of fossil fuels.”

• Said there would be “no more coal plants.“

• Suggested in December of 2019 that if coal miners lose their job due to his policies they should “learn to code.”

• Said of fossil fuel company executives, “we should put them in jail”.

• Endorsed a carbon tax on the American people, which will force households to pay much higher gasoline, heating, and cooling bills. 

• Endorsed a fracking ban. 

• On his first day in office, revoked the Keystone XL pipeline construction permits, throwing hundreds of people out of work and killing a natural gas boom that was underway.

The left is claiming that “Biden approved more drilling permits in his first year than Trump did in his.”

Numerically, this is true – but let us look at the reality.

While President Trump inherited an Obama era permitting process intentionally designed to issue as few permits as grudgingly possible, Biden inherited a streamlined one that cut permitting time drastically. As a result of an Executive Order issued by President Trump, in 2016, the Bureau of Land Management shifted to all-electronic filing. Permit approval times dropped from approximately 200 days to 120 days and then to just 63 days, enabling the Trump administration cut in half long backlogs oil and gas permits, clearing nearly 500 permits that had been pending for 3 years or longer.

President Trump, responding to Biden’s “end fossil fuel” comment said, “Oh, that’s a big statement. He’s going to destroy the oil industry. Will you remember that, Texas? Will you remember that, Pennsylvania?”

The reality is that the Democrats are maintaining plausible deniability as they are trying to destroy the cheapest and greatest concentration of energy man has ever discovered, hydrocarbons, by fighting a bureaucratic war against the industry.

Paid liar and spokeshole, Jen Psaki now claims there are 9,000 federal leases outstanding that the oil companies are not utilizing. Energy Information Agency does show over 9,000 leases issued, but that notwithstanding, the reality is that Biden has appointed and installed climate zealots and absolute antagonists in leadership at Federal Reserve, the EPA and Department of Energy and Interior.

The EPA, FERC, the SEC and the Federal Reserve are all also actively working against new oil and gas production, particularly the EPA and FERC. Woke corporations and funds are leaning on ESG scores to prevent funding of the oil and gas industry as a whole.

Larry Kudlow quotes oil entrepreneur, Cecil O'Brate, CEO of American Warrior Oil, as saying:

"President Biden, on day one of his presidency, made it his top priority to cripple American oil and gas producers. His administration has axed progress on the Keystone Pipeline, shut down leases on federal lands, encouraged woke Wall Street to divest from fossil fuels, and installed absolute antagonists in leadership at Federal Reserve, the EPA and Department of Interior." 

Earlier in Biden’s term, an offshore lease auction was held, but is result was challenged in court and the Biden administration has just sat on their hands and let the challenge go unanswered. This allows them to say they aren’t withholding new leases while effectively withholding new leases.

Obama could not prevent the oil boom because it happened on private lands, so one would assume that could happen again, without federal lands. But let us not forget that private development is subject to federal opposition from any or all of the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, NEPA, or other federal statutes that would block drilling, which is happening.

Biden’s bureaucracy is doing just that.

Just a few short weeks ago the Biden administration halted new drilling in a legal fight over climate costs. The Times pointed out that the Interior Department is pausing new federal oil and gas leases and that no new onshore federal leases have been issued under Biden.

Steven Moore, writing in the WSJ before the 2020 election, predicted it all:

“The truth is, if a Democrat is elected in 2020, they would ban nuclear energy, gas powered cars, plastic straws, plastic bags, coal power plants, fracking, offshore drilling, pipeline building, exporting fossil fuels, and more.”

Predictions are that gasoline at the pump could get to the ten to thirteen dollar a gallon level before this is over.

“Putin’s price increase” my ass.

Biden and his radical Democrats own this human caused disaster, one hundred and ten percent.