President Joe Biden plans to release 1 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve per day for up to six months. That seems like quite a bit because it comes to 180 million barrels of oil — enough to drain one-third of the reserve. But it’s really not that much if you think about the big picture. The public consumes 20 times that amount of oil each day, so this move only increases the supply by 5%. In fact, Biden’s additional contribution isn’t even enough to cover the 1.6 million-barrels-per-day increase in consumption since 2020. Another way to think about it: Biden wants to add nine days’ supply of oil over the course of six months.
At a time when premium gas costs $7 in some California jurisdictions, that isn’t even a Band-Aid over the problem. So you may ask yourself: What on earth does Biden hope to accomplish with this?
That’s easy. This is performative, just like everything else the Democratic Party does nowadays.
Some Democrats go on Twitter and tweet hashtags — others release a million barrels per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Why? Well, pollsters believe that Biden’s biggest problem right now is his perceived lack of empathy for voters. His staff evidently thinks that this token action will give him that emotional connection with voters that he lacks. “He’s doing something! You see?”
The problem is that there is no amount of performative silliness that can save Biden at this point in the election cycle. His disorderly and disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan cost him the faith of the nation. It was bad enough for the deaths it caused among U.S. service members and Afghan allies, but more importantly, it was emblematic of his administration’s persistent defiance of truth and common sense in favor of fringe ideology. That’s what has alienated voters.
Biden has been irrationally constricting oil and gas production. He keeps proposing huge spending bills in spite of the inflation he is already causing. He was lobbying Congress to help Russia avoid tough sanctions right up to the moment Russia invaded Ukraine. Biden refuses with zeal to enforce immigration law, seeming to relish lawlessness at the border and all of the drug and crime problems he is creating. His administration is making war on charter schools, even though they work well and help shrink the racial achievement gap in education. He clings to a senseless mask mandate for airports and airplanes. His administration continues to produce rules based on the false premise that men can become women through sheer force of will. He is collaborating with Russian President Vladimir Putin on an Iran deal that undercuts U.S. interests and all recent progress in the region. And his Justice Department, in the name of so-called equity, even lets arsonist killers off the hook.
On each issue, Biden, or the person making his decisions for him, treats as unimportant the realities his fellow citizens face. That’s the reason people think Biden lacks empathy — because he does. But to be fair, Biden’s problems are much bigger than yours. He is rapidly becoming a failed president.
On this particular issue of oil prices, he is caught between angry motorists and environmental extremists who want higher gas prices. Unwilling to get the oil flowing at home, he rails at oil companies for “sitting on record profits” instead of producing oil. Does he know how stupid it sounds to speak as if oil companies make money by not producing oil? Biden pathetically begs OPEC leaders for more oil. Now he is even considering turning to a worse dictator than Putin to get more oil. He’s worked so hard to alienate Middle Eastern leaders that they won’t even take his phone calls anymore.
Biden is blocking pipelines and fracking, attempting to bully banks out of investing in reliable energy, and even talking about nonsensical measures that will make oil and gas strikes on federal lands less likely.
The British are not this foolish — they are looking for new ways and new places to drill for more oil. The Canadians, despite their taste for pretty-boy socialism, at least have the good sense to keep the oil flowing no matter who is in power.
What is the point of Biden’s performative attempt at empathy if he’s just going to keep constraining domestic production? Why not just tweet some hashtags?
