OPINION:
President Biden is low on energy, and not just the power needed to operate his 80-year-old self. The president has siphoned off nearly half of the nation’s emergency oil reserve. He is obliged to refill the cache of essential fuel but thus far has failed to replace one drop. When replenishing the ocean of oil resembles an exercise in futility, the drawdown has the look of an intentional phase in Mr. Biden’s ongoing war on fossil fuels.
The Department of Energy announced earlier this month that it “will purchase up to 3 million barrels of oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.”“Attempt to purchase” would be more precise — a request for bids in December netted no sales. The fruitless effort cast more than a little doubt on the wisdom of Mr. Biden’s scheme to tap the reserve, which saved drivers 40 cents a gallon on gasoline but left the nation unprepared for the unexpected. “We will begin that process this year, but to refill the full amount is impossible,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm conceded in March.
Declarations of absolutes like “impossible” can be overstated, but Ms. Granholm’s might prove accurate: Mr. Biden’s top offer of $72 a barrel sits beneath current market prices. He might score some oil with his lowball figure, but expecting such a strategy to refill the reserve to the brim is hardly likely.
Mr. Biden has made impeding the flow of petroleum products from U.S. producers to consumers a benchmark of his presidency. As night follows day, the inexorable law of supply and demand pushed gasoline prices past the $5 mark last year, the highest in U.S. history.
As stickers appeared on gas pumps sporting the president’s image and captioned with “I did that!” Mr. Biden reached into his bag of diktats and ordered the release of millions of barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or SPR. The vast complex of salt caverns beneath the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, which have stored emergency oil since 1975, are now missing 279 million of the 638 million barrels they contained when Mr. Biden took office, according to the Energy Information Administration.
And that gives away the anti-oil scheme. It mustn’t be forgotten that the president has vowed to abolish fossil fuels, most particularly “black gold.” Accordingly, he has expended it as he spends money — frivolously. Selling nearly 1 million barrels from the SPR to China, America’s chief foreign adversary, is telling.
To be sure, other presidents have also dipped into the nation’s oil reserve. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama did so in response to global oil supply disruptions. All were in response to actual emergencies.
In contrast, Mr. Biden has manufactured national energy turmoil by first vowing to imperil the domestic petroleum industry and then following through with policies that impede its production capabilities.
If replenishing the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve is indeed “impossible,” Americans have President Biden to thank for leaving the nation vulnerable to an energy crisis during a particularly unstable period in world history. Given his war on fossil fuels, there is every reason to reckon that Mr. Biden’s oil turmoil is by design.
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