President Joe Biden gave an early Christmas present to one of the worst human rights abusers in the world: Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro and his regime.
Easing sanctions on Venezuela is bad energy policy for America. It’s bad foreign policy. It’s bad environmental policy.
Biden’s giveaway is terrible for American energy producers and consumers. The United States has some of the largest oil and natural gas reserves in the world.
We don’t need to go begging anyone – least of all to a tin-pot dictator who supports Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. [emphasis, links added]
Rather than paying other countries for energy, we should produce more energy here at home. If Democrats in Washington stop their war on American energy, American workers will benefit, prices will go down, and our economy will grow stronger.
A few years ago, Biden promised that he would “end fossil fuels.” More recently he vowed “no more drilling.” He’s not kidding. Over the last two years, Biden has done everything he can to shut down domestic production.
On his first day in office, the president killed the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have brought 800,000 barrels of oil a day to this country.
He halted leasing for oil and natural gas production on federal land until a federal court intervened. He strangled exploration near the Arctic and off of our coasts.
This administration leased the fewest acres of federal land for energy production since World War II. Their attacks on energy investment also mean we are now producing roughly 2 million fewer barrels of oil per day than we were projected to produce this year.
In just two years, Democrats have raised taxes and fees on American natural gas and domestic energy production. They have allowed our energy workers to be sidelined by miles of government red tape.
When the president is not pleading with dictators for oil, he is raiding the nation’s strategic oil reserve – the very oil reserve Republicans tried to refill in 2020 and congressional Democrats bragged about blocking.
Thanks to the president and Democrats, our emergency energy reserve is now at the lowest level in 40 years. This makes us more vulnerable to energy and national security emergencies.
American families are paying the price and feeling the pain from Democrats’ energy policies. Gas prices have broken records under Biden, and they’re still nearly 50% higher than the day he took office.
Millions of Americans have fallen behind on their energy bills, and winter is about to drive prices even higher.
Paying off the Maduro regime is also a terrible foreign policy. Maduro is an indicted narco-terrorist. He is responsible for a migration crisis that sent 300 Venezuelans flooding our southern border every single day last month.
Venezuela was once the richest country in Latin America. Today, it is one of the poorest. This is thanks to the socialist policies of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro.
The Biden Administration needs a serious answer to the migration crisis. We need to stop Maduro’s trafficking of illicit narcotics that continue to kill Americans here at home. The answer is certainly not to buy their oil and prop up the regime that caused the crisis.
The Biden administration is going above and beyond to boost Venezuela’s oil production by stifling production in Guyana, a strong American partner in South America.
Guyana struck liquid gold when it discovered an estimated 11 billion barrels of oil on its shores – a big boost to the nation’s struggling economy and for democracy in the region.
However, last year the Biden administration blocked a developmental loan to upgrade Guyana’s oil export infrastructure. Absent U.S. investment, communist China now is asserting its influence over Guyana’s oil industry.
Democrats say their policies are all about protecting the environment. The Biden administration’s Venezuela payoff is a terrible environmental policy.
Read rest at Fox News
Maybe the keepitintheground business is really about saving domestic fossil fuels for down the road, the long game. We know that green energy doesn’t cut it without fossil fueled backup. Burn everybody else’s oil and gas first and be the last country with the lights on.