After years of oil surging well past $3 per gallon, prices plateaued at about the $2.50 mark for most of the Trump administration, only for futures to fall into the negatives at the peak of the pandemic.
Flash forward to a year into Joe Biden’s presidency, and fuel is up nearly 50%, turbocharging our inflation rate to a 40-year high. And based on Biden’s hastily recited statement in response to Russia’s deployment of troops to separatist regions of Ukraine, the White House has no plan to stop, or even slow, your gas bill from skyrocketing.
“I’m going to take robust action to make sure the pain of our sanctions is targeted at a Russian economy, not ours,” Biden said during a Tuesday briefing. “We’re closely monitoring energy supplies for any disruption. We’re executing the plan in coordination with major oil producing consumers and producers.”
Considering the current state of our oil supply, it would be nice to learn the details of this plan.
Biden has attempted to reduce domestic oil drilling while doing nothing to reduce our need for domestic oil supply. He killed the Keystone XL pipeline, spooked domestic production with shifting standards and regulatory promises he’s since reneged on, and refused to extend further drilling permits. Across the pond, he defied the pleas of our Ukrainian allies to cower to Germany and allowed Russia to construct its Nord Stream 2 pipeline, reversing our sanctions on a project designed specifically to reconsolidate the global oil market into an OPEC-controlled cartel.
The result? Not just rising prices stateside, but also our increasing reliance on oil from a top adversary. Even just up to November, the last month of 2021 recorded by the Energy Information Administration, we imported nearly 233 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products from Russia, more than any other entire year on record since the EIA started recording Russian imports in the ’90s. By the end of last year, Russian oil comprised 7% of our oil imports.
So, what’s the plan? Are we rebooting Keystone or kick-starting new drilling permits? It sure doesn’t seem like it, considering that the Interior Department has committed to freezing drilling on federal lands. The bipartisan infrastructure bill Biden signed into law authorizes $6 billion to keep crucial nuclear power plants in operation, but even expanding carbon-neutral nuclear power does nothing to offset the immediate crisis of our 7.5% inflation rate. For now, consumers are stuck praying that Biden has plans a little less disastrous than his handling of the Ukraine crisis thus far, lest they pay the price — literally — at the pump.
