{UAH} THE FRAUDLENT HAS BEEN A GOD'S GIFT TO BIG OILS -> They have today what they would have never got from Trump

OPINION

Biden has been God's gift to Big Oil

by Michael Rubin

October 26, 2021 06:30 AM

President Joe Biden made tackling the "climate crisis" his central goal.

Just one week into his presidency, Biden issued an executive order to "intensify international collaborations to drive innovation and deployment of clean energy technologies, which are critical for climate protection" and a number of actions to reduce or eliminate fossil fuel production and dependency at home. He appointed former Secretary of State John Kerry as his special presidential envoy for climate. He revoked permits for the Keystone XL pipeline to distribute Canadian oil to the United States but threw his support behind the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to transport Russian gas into Europe. He also offered continued U.S. encouragement for an existing pipeline scheme for the Taliban’s Afghanistan .

The most obvious effect of Biden’s hostility to America’s hydrocarbon industry has been skyrocketing gas prices at the pump, up 33% since Biden took office. Biden’s team, meanwhile, seems purposely aloof to the pain the increase in pump prices pose, or for the reverberations of skyrocketing energy costs on inflation.

Those involved in the oil industry say there is likely a strategy behind Biden’s efforts to inflate oil prices. After all, while alternative fuels sound good in theory, even with tremendous government investment, they remain prohibitively expensive. Electricity generated by offshore wind, onshore wind, hydroelectric plants, solar power, and biomass all cost far more than electricity produced by fossil fuels. Keeping gas and oil prohibitively high narrows the cost gap between renewable and nonrenewable energy supplies and, Biden’s team hopes, will make investment in renewable energy more attractive from an economic standpoint.

Enron became famous in part because it claimed that it could produce electricity from solar energy at rates competitive with gas, oil, and coal. It raked in billions of dollars in investment but covered up and lied about its subsequent failures. Ultimately, the company came crashing down. Alas, it seems Biden’s team learned the wrong lessons from the debacle: Rather than seek to reduce the price of alternative energy to that of gas and oil, the White House instead hopes to raise the price of energy generated from fossil fuels to the inflated price of alternatives.

Ultimately, reality may intrude as every energy source has drawbacks: Nuclear energy is emission-free, but there is the problem of waste; solar plants fry migratory birds not already minced by windmills. Solar cells also depend on materials the mining of which is often toxic to the environment. Hydroelectric power, meanwhile, wreaks havoc on ecosystems.

Biden’s restrictions on drilling and production may harm U.S. energy security and national security as the U.S. again becomes dependent on the whims of outside producers. But some Americans do benefit from Biden’s policies, and not just because his climate czar Kerry gets to jet around the world. Biden’s politics- rather-than-market-driven energy policies drive up the cost of oil, making fracking profitable. They provide oil producers and oil company executives with a financial windfall they could only dream about during the Trump era.

Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971 ) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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