In a rare outbreak of common sense — or at least the appearance of common sense — overcoming political expediency, the Biden administration is quietly overseeing a tremendous increase in domestic oil production. If one is to believe the Washington Post, which granted, even under the most favorable of circumstances, is a bit of a stretch:
The U.S. is producing so much oil that it has undermined the influence of OPEC, which failed when it tried to make production cuts recently to drive prices up globally. The amount cut was quickly backfilled by the U.S. and other non-OPEC nations, which gladly grabbed the market share OPEC forfeited.
At the same time this increase in production is going on, the administration is continuing to mealy-mouth the line about easing away from fossil fuels. Whether anyone save the most die-hard tree-huggers still buy this as a necessity is strictly a matter of conjecture. However, the administration must at least pay lip service to this notion lest the crazed media fringe, whose adherents still scream day and night that only energy produced by unicorn farts is acceptable in today’s world, take offense.
The Biden administration’s inability to admit that it has allowed an increase in oil production stands in sharp contrast to the campaign by former President Donald Trump, who has stated loudly and often that one of his priorities, should he reassume the presidency, will be to ramp up domestic oil production dramatically. It is sadly amusing that the Biden administration, which must of necessity appear to oppose anything and everything coming from the Trump camp, is doing the exact same thing that Trump has publicly stated he will do but is too chicken to admit it to anyone.
People with memories extending past the last 15 minutes or so recall that one of the first actions Biden took in office was shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the United States, thus eliminating thousands of jobs and putting a severe crimp in domestic oil production.
Given such past actions, it is little wonder that Biden has not said a word regarding how he’s now rolling out the red carpet to oil companies to produce as much as they can while publicly denouncing them as greedy – you guessed – um, oil barons or something.
Should Biden remain in the upcoming presidential campaign, watching him and his media lackeys duck and dodge all energy production and independence questions will be amusing. This is one of the significant built-in disadvantages of attempting to appeal to an age group, namely millennials, who believe that they are whatever they pretend to be — and insist whatever they pretend to be true is the case — for votes. How do you try explaining the realities of energy production and consumption to such a generation? There is no opportunity for rationalization with the self-delusional. Biden and the Democrats have made a living out of telling people what they believe the people want to hear. How, then, will they respond when people ask why their actions bear no resemblance to their words because their words are impossible to place into action?
