For the third time in fewer than eight months, Saudi Arabia has intentionally humiliated President Joe Biden on the world stage.
Biden, lauded as a preeminent foreign-policy skilled after a half-century within the Senate, couldn’t get the Saudis to reply his telephone calls in March. He made a personal visit to the dominion in August to ask them to extend oil manufacturing, they usually declined. And on Thursday, the Saudis provocatively released a statement confirming the Biden administration had asked them to hold off oil-production cuts till after the midterm elections to “keep away from unhealthy information.”
Biden, after taking pictures America’s oil business within the foot, asks OPEC for first support.
For a purported statesman, he’s decidedly ignorant concerning the geopolitics of fossil fuels. OPEC isn’t our pal and never our ally. The cartel was created in 1960 for the specific goal of difficult and defeating America’s oil business. President Jimmy Carter was simply as naïve pondering OPEC would reply to purpose or diplomacy.
“By no means interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake,” Napoleon reportedly stated two centuries in the past. Group Biden begging the Saudis and OPEC, but once more, isn’t just unhealthy technique — it’s shameful.
Biden’s speechwriters typically finish his teleprompter remarks with a phrase they in all probability need etched on the façade of his presidential library: “There’s nothing we are able to’t do once we come collectively.” Clearly, that line doesn’t discuss with producing our personal oil.
We don’t want the Saudis or OPEC. We had a home power business so sturdy, in 2018 we turned a net petroleum exporter for the primary time since 1949. Costs had been decrease throughout the board — the alternative of inflation charges at 40-year highs.
Our insurance policies made the OPEC nations economically weaker. Earlier than the COVID pandemic, Saudi Arabia’s financial system was shrinking whereas oil costs stabilized at $64 a barrel. Immediately, the dominion rejoices because it sits on billions of surplus petrodollars. Biden’s home power coverage has harm People whereas making America weak overseas.
As for the shameful, Biden has leased the fewest acres for oil and gasoline drilling than any president since World Battle II. He’s canceled lease gross sales within the Gulf of Mexico and on each coasts.
It’s shameful to go begging authoritarians for oil when you have got, at your fingertips, all of the life-saving oil your residents want. It’s shameful for the president to see People endure however refuse to face as much as radical inexperienced teams.
What’s most despicable is that Biden does this not for our profit — however for his political occasion’s exhibiting within the midterms. Biden doesn’t need People to win. He desires Democrats to win the election. These should not remotely the identical factor.
Group Biden and Democrats play methods to obfuscate this fact. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pretends home oil ranges are simply shy of former President Donald Trump’s information. He does this by including the 1 million barrels Biden takes out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve per day as new manufacturing. He is aware of this can be a ploy. The Biden administration is aware of as properly, however such numeric manipulations are anticipated from a crew that attempted to persuade us inflation is “transitory.”
We ought to be exhausted with rhetorical political video games and partisan duplicity. President Barack Obama was caught on a hot mic in 2012 telling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to train persistence as he would have “extra flexibility” after the election. The message to Vladimir Putin, the true Russian chief, was clear: Obama had two insurance policies, one for the Russians and one for the American folks, and the latter wouldn’t have political or electoral prices. That duplicity ought to have value him within the 2012 election.
Now Biden says the identical factor. He has one coverage for Saudi Arabia and OPEC and one other for the American folks, and the latter mustn’t have political or electoral prices. That duplicity ought to value him every little thing.
As People head into winter paying extra for meals, gasoline, electrical energy and heating oil and because the OPEC nations rejoice of their rising wealth and energy, Biden’s high precedence is political preservation. All this whereas America’s God-given blessing of ample fossil fuels lies trapped underneath our ft due to local weather hysteria.
There’s a value to pay for Biden’s international and power coverage weak spot and duplicity. It’s too unhealthy the American persons are caught selecting up the tab.
Daniel Turner is the founder and govt director of Power The Future, a nationwide nonprofit group that advocates for American power jobs.
Twitter: @DanielTurnerPTF
