Europe Needs More American Oil And Gas, Not Windmills And Rainbows

To hear White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki tell it, the United States can reduce the world’s energy dependence on Russia by installing solar panels and perhaps re-insulating homes. [bold, links added]

President Joe Biden began his term in office with a moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal land.

He need only take his boot off the industry’s neck in order to produce much-needed energy given Russia’s long-expected invasion of Ukraine last week.

But on ABC’s This Week, when asked about a possible push to produce more oil and gas in the U.S., Psaki dismissed the matter as irrelevant.

“What this actually justifies, in President Biden’s view, is the fact that we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and on oil in general,” she said. “And we need to look at other ways of having energy in our country and others.”

We understand that Biden’s White House is always under a lot of pressure from the Left to make public acts of fealty to the climate gods — even when that entails saying things that would make a cynic out of any intelligent fourth grader.

But as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s tanks roll through Ukraine, violating international law and killing civilians along the way, perhaps it’s finally time to draw the line and start talking sense for a change.

If an organization as notoriously corrupt as FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, can come together and do what’s right, there’s no reason Biden’s White House cannot follow suit.

Biden and his senior staff need to take a break from showing so much deference toward a Western green political movement that Putin has been deliberately funding over the years in order to advance Russian national interests.

It is genuinely a disgrace and a humiliation, for example, for the U.S. to have its climate envoy, John Kerry, tell European journalists that the real threat behind Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is that it will distract world leaders from climate change.

When it comes to energy, the U.S. is currently in a unique and advantageous position precisely because it can export natural gas to those currently dependent on Russia.

Psaki’s comment is especially daft because what people need is something to put in their gas tanks, to heat their homes and their water, and to do their cooking.

That something, in most cases, is going to be some kind of petroleum product — gasoline, heating oil, or natural gas.

Despite great advances in electric vehicle technology, only about 2% of the cars on U.S. roads are plug-ins anyway — and that isn’t going to change for decades.

But beyond that, no change to Americans’ energy use will affect Europe’s current dependency on Russian gas, which is one of the major factors in the current conflict.

The best thing Americans can do to support Europe right now and reduce its dependency on Russia is to produce more — much more — natural gas, liquefy it, and ship it to Europe.

No amount of windmills erected by Americans will get Europeans the energy they need in order to stand up to Putin without fear.

So far, the story of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been one of Ukrainian success against a much more powerful foe in spite of great odds.

The Biden administration’s failed deterrence strategy and its hesitancy to arm Ukraine adequately have been part of the odds up to this point.

At any moment, Biden can choose to stop being part of the problem. One way would be to remove all possible obstacles to further oil and gas exploration.

Read more at Washington Examiner