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Biden Energy Agenda Creates China Dependence (substack.com)
The US depends on imports for 100% of 17 renewable-and-EV-critical minerals.On Sept. 15, I testified to Congress about the unfolding energy crisis in Europe. When I explained how President Biden’s own energy policies are harming our allies abroad and consumers at home, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said to me, “If there was a war on energy, how is Exxon, Chevron, BP and Shell making over 200% profits? You can’t have a war on an industry and then they’re having record profits.”
The reason, I told Khanna, is precisely because the Biden administration has been stifling oil and natural gas production, thereby reducing supplies, and increasing prices and profits.
Do Democrats really not understand how supply and demand work? Of course they do. They know that, by repressing oil and natural gas production, they’re making these resources scarce and expensive. That’s how they want it. They think high gasoline prices will force people to buy costly electric cars. But they know that their position of effectively rationing energy is highly unpopular, so they seek to scapegoat oil and gas companies — an easy target.
It’s true that the Biden Administration is not the sole cause of high energy prices. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine rightly led President Biden in March to ban Russian oil and natural gas imports into the US. But the main reason for expensive energy prices is President Biden’s suppression of oil and gas production.
It would have been easy for Biden to make up for loss of Russian oil imports through expanded domestic drilling. Where the US imported around 18 million barrels of Russian oil per month, we produce 19 million barrels of oil domestically per day. Instead, Biden has leased less public land for oil and gas production during his first 19 months in office than any other administration since World War II, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.
But all this is a prelude to the main way Democrats plan to make energy more expensive, which is by spending $370 billion of taxpayer money through the new (and misnamed) “Inflation Reduction Act” to subsidize solar panels and wind turbines made in China.
Renewables make electricity more costly everywhere they are deployed at scale. Just look at California. It has the second most expensive electricity in the US after Hawaii, but it can barely keep the lights on. Why? Because the unreliable nature of weather-dependent energy sources requires more backup power plants, transmission lines and people who can make electricity reliable.