OPINION:
The ups and downs of energy prices have been mostly up over the last 2½ years. And that’s no accident. Americans are paying dearly for the fuel that drives the modern world, thanks to President Biden’s meddling in domestic oil production.
The characteristic sawtooth pattern of oil prices on the global market has taken a steeper upward jag lately, climbing more than $10 a barrel since Saudi-led OPEC curtailed production by 1 million barrels a day this month.
Subsequently, U.S. drivers have been greeted by gasoline prices that, on average nationally, have risen 6 cents a gallon in a month. On the local level, overnight spikes of 25 cents are not unusual.
Gas prices have risen more than 50% since Mr. Biden moved into the Oval Office, yet the White House has been declaring victory because the pain at the pump doesn’t sting nearly as much as it did a year ago, when a gallon of gas peaked at $5 nationally.
The momentary price relief is hardly comforting, though, given that Mr. Biden has demonstrated as much interest in protecting Americans from future oil shocks in the long term as a leftist prosecutor has in discouraging shoplifting from a convenience store.
For a number of reasons, the relief will not last.
On July 21, the Biden administration signed a court settlement with environmental organizations, agreeing to set 11 million watery acres in the Gulf of Mexico off-limits to oil-drilling leases.
Thanks to the efforts of the Sierra Club and other green groups, the safety of an obscure aquatic species called the Rice’s whale has been guaranteed. Americans’ well-being, by contrast, remains in doubt.
A coalition of offshore oil production players led by the American Petroleum Institute lamented the anticipated impact: “This private settlement agreement between the federal government and environmental activists places unfounded restrictions on operations in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico that severely hamper America’s ability to produce energy in a region that is responsible for the lowest carbon-intensive barrels in the world.”
American producers are struggling to keep up as a result of policy choices like these. At 12.6 million barrels a day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s last count, domestic crude production still lags behind the pre-pandemic peak of 13 million barrels a day in November 2019. Earlier this month, the agency cut its forecast for 2023’s production increase by 50,000 barrels a day.
The agency’s figures also expose the gimmicks the White House has been using to disguise the impact of its energy meddling. The Biden administration has been furiously draining the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the hopes of boosting supply enough to offset the rising price of crude.
Since Mr. Biden’s inauguration, 45% of the reserve has been siphoned away, leaving America’s emergency stockpile at the lowest level since 1983. The Treasury Department estimated that last year’s carefully timed release from the reserve provided a temporary relief in the cost of a gallon of gas in the 13- to 31-cent range.
Now that the reserve’s tanks are running low, there may not be enough left to cushion the inevitable price shocks that follow from the obstacles being placed in the way of oil production. As the 2024 campaign revs up, bolstering domestic energy production needs to be a top campaign issue.
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