"In former President Donald Trump's final month in office, the United States achieved something it hadn't in more than a generation: In the final week of December, America didn't import a single drop of crude oil from Saudi Arabia for the first time in 35 years.
It was a testament to Trump's America-first energy policy, which prioritized reliance on domestic production and drove global crude prices down below $50 a barrel for most of 2020 and U.S. gasoline prices to an average of about $2.30 in December.
The low prices throughout 2020 also crimped Russia's energy-dependent economy, leading to greater unrest in Moscow.
Now, a month into the Biden presidency, crude has jumped to $65 a barrel and U.S. gasoline to $2.72 per gallon due to a variety of geopolitical events.
... On his first day in office, Biden ordered the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada shut down, which unions said would cost 11,000 jobs.
He also rejoined the Paris climate accord, froze new drilling on federal lands for 60 days, and nominated for secretary of the interior Congresswoman Deb Haaland, who has led efforts against oil and gas exploration in America, raising fears the drilling and fracking moratorium could become more permanent.
"Fracking is a danger to the air we breathe and water we drink," Haaland wrote in 2017, just before she was elected to Congress.
"The auctioning off of our land for fracking and drilling serves only to drive profits to the few."
... there is growing consensus among economists that the Biden policies are likely to inhibit U.S. manufacturing growth and drive up energy prices in the long term while exciting environmentalists.
... Steve Moore, a Heritage Foundation economist who advised Trump (said) "The whole green agenda it turns out is anti-blue collar industrial workers."
Moore said one of the ironies is that the Biden agenda will aid Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran to the detriment of U.S. markets.
Oil- and gas-dependent economies like Russia thrive when crude is north of $70 per barrel, and they suffer when it falls below $50, experts said.
"There is no doubt in my mind that the irony of the Russia collusion nonsense was that there was no one who hurt Russia more than Trump and his America-first energy policies," Moore said.
"Russia really is nothing more than a third world country, with oil and gas."
... "In the name of climate change and in cradling the progressive, far left of our country, we are doing away with domestic production of oil," Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) said.
"And then we're going to be forced as a country to purchase that from countries that are not our friends and allies.
It makes absolutely no sense.
... The mainstream media is not going to talk about how the Biden administration is helping out Russia, by the things that they're doing as it relates to oil and gas," he said. "
... The American Petroleum Institute, the leading oil and gas trade group in the United States, recently completed a study showing that a longer-term ban on new federal energy leases could:
Increase U.S. oil imports from foreign sources by 2 million barrels a day by 2030
Decrease annual U.S. natural gas exports by 800 billion cubic feet by 2030
Cut U.S. GDP by a cumulative $700 billion by 2030
Cost nearly 1 million jobs by 2022
Increase U.S. household energy costs by $19 billion by 2030
... Experts said the changes aren't likely to drive down U.S. energy usage, meaning higher prices and more foreign reliance in the long term, especially if the drilling ban becomes more permanent."