OPINION:
Just a few months ago, President Biden declared that America will need oil “for at least another decade, and beyond that.”
Unfortunately for the American people, the president didn’t say where that oil would come from. Despite our country’s bountiful natural resources, the current administration is preferencing oil production in foreign dictatorships and imperiling America’s national security in the process.
On the eve of the pandemic, U.S. crude oil production peaked at a monthly average of 13 million barrels each day. This feat was the product of American technological innovation, a competitive financial system that rallied behind successful entrepreneurs, and a repeal of the ban on oil exports by the Republican-led Congress in December 2015.
Energy resources flowed so freely that Congress was emboldened to sell off some of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, with the knowledge that America would nonetheless be energy secure.
Even amid the turmoil of the pandemic in the following months, then-President Donald Trump recognized that energy security is national security and brokered an agreement between major oil-producing countries to stabilize global oil prices.
By balancing the global oil supply, the deal sheltered the domestic energy industry through the chaos and prevented a tsunami of bankruptcies among American energy producers.
Fast forward three years, and the situation couldn’t be more different.
The Biden administration’s eagerness to support renewable energy has been matched by an equally aggressive effort to limit American fossil fuel production, despite the fact that fossil fuels meet approximately 79% of U.S. energy demand.
From raising fees for energy development on federal lands to inculcating climate disclosures at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the administration is discouraging American oil production with every policy lever at its disposal. The result of this long-COVID energy policy is a national daily oil production that still hasn’t recovered from the pandemic.
But, as Mr. Biden predicted, America continues to run on oil. To balance the domestic battle against oil production with the political liability of high energy prices, the administration is forced to quietly encourage energy production abroad — even from our adversaries.
Iran is a key beneficiary of this backward bargain. The U.S. has a vast framework of sanctions to limit Iranian oil sales that would fund terrorism, repression, or attacks on American service members.
But earlier this year, a bipartisan group of 12 senators publicly lamented that the Biden administration had created bureaucratic “enforcement gaps,” allowing Tehran to fund its malign activity with impunity.
Thanks to a sanctions framework that resembles Swiss cheese, oil exports from Iran are surging to highs not seen since 2018. The mullahs’ mouthpiece has bragged that Tehran raked in more oil cash last year than it did under the first year of the disastrous nuclear deal.
Even Russia is getting a pass when it comes to oil exports. After the Kremlin’s renewed invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Biden administration spearheaded an initiative to cap Russian oil sales at $60 per barrel.
Yet the price cap is beleaguered by patchy enforcement and self-defeating exemptions. Before the cap even came into effect, America’s Eastern European allies unsuccessfully argued that the $60 price was too generous to Moscow. Meanwhile, Department of Treasury officials make no secret of the fact that the scheme is designed to keep Russian oil flowing, even as the administration tries to seal the oil spigot at home.
This policy of preferencing foreign oil production leaves America vulnerable to the volatility of the oil market. Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia announced that its recent oil production cuts would continue — and possibly deepen.
Recognizing that the Biden administration’s regulatory reins would hold back American producers and protect the Saudis’ global oil market share, Riyadh is free to juice oil prices higher. With American producers tied in red tape, rising oil prices and low refinery outputs have set U.S. gas prices climbing.
Even America’s oil backstop has succumbed to the “Bidenomics” energy agenda. The politicized drawdown of the SPR ahead of the 2022 midterm elections has drained the nation’s emergency oil stockpile to its lowest level in 40 years.
While the administration was raiding 180 million barrels from the reserves to lower gas prices from a weekly national average of $5 — among their highest level in American history — pundits declared the move to be the “oil trade of the year.”
But now, as oil prices climb, a plan announced just last month to buy 6 million barrels for the reserves has been scrapped. At the administration’s current pace, it will take about 30 years to refill the Biden administration’s pre-election drawdown. All the while, gas prices remain $1.50 higher than when Mr. Biden took office.
Under any realistic scenario, the American economy will need an abundance of oil for the time being. Constraining domestic energy production in the interim while welcoming production abroad is a recipe for economic fragility.
Until the administration adopts a balanced energy policy, foreign dictators will have them over an oil barrel.
• Brooke Rollins is the president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute, and previously served as the director of the Domestic Policy Council in the Trump administration. Oliver McPherson-Smith is the director of the Center for Energy & Environment at the America First Policy Institute.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.