Pinkerton: Like Carter, Biden Crushes American Energy and Enriches Foreign Producers

On October 19, President Joe Biden patted himself on the back for bringing down gasoline prices, but added, with a tone of threat in his voice, “they’re not falling fast enough.” The Biden administration has, indeed, been jawboning the oil companies on prices, trying to cajole them down.

Yet since angry words from the president haven’t been working well enough to cut prices (no surprise), the administration has continued with another midterm-election-minded strategy: emptying out the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). This unprecedented politicization of the SPR led former Texas governor and U.S.

energy secretary Rick Perry to declare, “It is unacceptable for the Biden administration to use our emergency oil reserves as a political tool to temporarily lower gas prices ahead of the election.”.

officials are bracing for another potential price surge in December, if a European embargo on Russian oil goes into effect and the Saudis refuse to increase oil production to make up for the anticipated reduction in supply.” In other words, it’s possible that the Biden administration will be able to time a price-decline just in time for the election. But after that, watch out. (In the meantime, Klain really ought to be known as the White House chief of campaigning. A watchdog group, America First Legal Foundation, noticed a May 22 tweet which included the pitch, “Get your Democrats Deliver merch today!” America First filed a complaint, arguing that such partisan spieling violates the Hatch Act.).

gasoline prices are up about 60 percent since Biden took office. This should be no surprise, since oil prices are up 70 percent.

So what to do? Democrats who don’t control the SPR are sticking with that old standby: demagoguery. For instance, California governor Gavin Newsom has regularly attacked energy companies and pledges to hold them “accountable.” Newsom is widely seen as a possible candidate for president, perhaps as soon as 2024. And two other once-and-perhaps-future Democratic presidential hopefuls, Sen.

oil production is down about ten percent from its peak under former president Donald Trump.  And while U.S.

natural gas production is up slightly, the curve of increase has flattened.  It’s plain as day that American energy production has been stifled, and this at a time when it’s much needed.

That’s because oil and gas imports to the West from another big producer, Russia, have been all but eliminated by the Ukraine War. Which is why energy prices in Europe went parabolic, bankrupting venerable companies. In such a situation, a sellers’ market, one would expect producers to produce more. And that would be happening, except for two things: the Biden administration’s foreign policy, and its domestic policy.

On foreign policy, Biden went to Saudi Arabia in July to ask the Saudis to increase production, thereby pushing down prices. And yet even the Main Stream Media had to admit that the trip was a bust for Biden.  It seems that his long-expressed hostility to Saudi Arabia—back in 2019, he called it a “pariah”—has poisoned the U.S.-Saudi relationship, at least for as long as Biden is in the White House. Indeed, in the wake of Biden’s visit, the oil kingdom actually cut production. Oof. The anti-woke investor-activist Vivek Ramaswamy sums it up: “The U.S.

that Biden took over in 2021 was probably as energy-secure as it’s ever been. In fact, during the Trump administration, the U.S.

In fact, we’ve been down this road before. This author, a Baby Boomer who remembers the 1970s well, has felt called to chronicle the many parallels between the 39th president, Jimmy Carter, elected in 1976, and Biden, #46, today. Their energy policies, too, have overlapped, as was first written in February of last year?

Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Fahd shakes hands with President Jimmy Carter during arrival ceremonies at the White House on May 24, 1977.

The new 40th president immediately decontrolled oil prices; predictably, production started increasing. In fact, producers, fully incentivized, began exploring new techniques to produce more. The result was fracking, which extracted still more energy out of seemingly exhausted fields. The success of that entrepreneurial innovation is a big reason why we got to what Trump called “energy dominance.”

But then Biden came in, embracing a strategy that might be called energy submission. That is, why be strong when you can be weak? Unlike in Carter’s time, the key issue today isn’t price controls, but rather, another way of throttling production that’s just as effective: regulating and banning in the name of climate change

Gasoline dealers demonstrate against President Jimmy Carter’s oil policies outside the White House on August 1, 1979

Demonstrators in favor of expanded oil drilling protest outside the Carter White House in January of 1980, after President Jimmy Carter tightened restrictions and raised taxes on oil drilling

Ray Phillips, operator of a Conoco Station in Denver, CO, inspects sign that was to be installed at all Conoco stations due to President Jimmy Carter’s 10-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax set to take effect on May 14, 1980

As we have seen, the result of this submissive policy is shrunken production. And that means, just as it did back in the 1970s, that oil (and  natural gas) consumers, bereft of their own production, are transferring huge amounts of wealth to oil and gas producers who aren’t so green. Recently the Associated Press reported that European governments—which embraced energy submission long before Biden—have “allocated 576 billion euros (over $566 billion) in energy relief to households and businesses since September 2021.” In other words, the Europeans have shelled out more than half-a-trillion dollars to protect the well-being of European energy consumers—and all of this money goes overseas. That’s right: for the virtue-signaling green-moral elevation of not drilling and digging themselves, the Euros are sending their wealth to those who happily drill and dig

 (And on November 1, the Biden administration indicated that it would start doing the same thing–providing new subsidies to help consumers pay the higher prices for energy that could have been produced at home, but wasn’t.  So instead of producing more here, we’re paying more overseas.)

Actually, it’s worse than that—even from the point of view of  the greens. You see, once the Europeans realized that green assurances of energy adequacy were hollow—that solar panels and windmills couldn’t assure even basic survival in the winter—they did a policy 180. Today, the Europeans are actually burning more carbon fuels, including the dreaded “c” word, coal. In fact, coal prices are up more than 700 percent in the last two years, and coal production is rising. As always, China is avidly building coal plants, and in the meantime, coal mines around the world are springing back to life. Indeed, even in über-grün Germany, they’re knocking down a wind farm to make way for a coal mine

Jimmy Carter ignored the need for more energy and paid a steep price when he ran for re-election. Half a century later, Joe Biden is also ignoring it. Indeed, just on October 31, Bloomberg News reported that the Biden administration is likely to replicate yet another Carter policy:  a “windfall profits tax” on oil companies