By Noah Rothman
Monday, March 07, 2022
Even before Russian tanks poured over the Ukrainian
border to overthrow the government in Kyiv, the Biden administration warned
that the West’s duty to safeguard Ukraine’s independence would not be “painless.” Joe Biden didn’t elaborate on this prediction in
great detail, but he did promise to “limit the pain the American people are
feeling at the gas pump.” Save, however, from coordinating the release of less
than a day’s worth of global oil consumption from the world’s strategic
reserves, the administration tried to suggest that none of its green-energy
priorities needed to change in response to the Russian menace.
Pressed last week by reporters to explain why the
administration had not responded to a crisis that puts downward pressure on the
global oil supply by pursuing policies that would augment domestic fossil-fuel
production, White House Press Sec. Jen Psaki shrunk into a defensive crouch. It’s the oil producers’
fault for not ramping up production to take advantage of record prices, she
suggested. The domestic wells and pipelines that the White House prevented from
opening would have “no impact” on global energy prices, she insisted. Indeed,
the crisis in Europe “is all a reminder, in the president’s view” of “our need
to reduce our reliance on oil” by doing more to “invest in clean energy.”
A week has not passed since Psaki made these remarks, but
the ground has shifted beneath the administration’s feet. Many in Congress,
including the Democratic House Speaker, have endorsed a legislative ban on Russian energy
imports to the U.S., and the administration is reportedly exploring ways to
support European allies who are dependent on Russian energy imports while
unilaterally imposing greater restrictions on the Russian energy market.
Suddenly finding herself in agreement with the national mood, Psaki
has pivoted to touting the Biden administration’s aggressive efforts
to increase domestic fossil-fuel production.
Talk is cheap. The White House’s actions betray the
extent to which the American energy market has been artificially constrained.
Moreover, a flurry of diplomatic activity over the weekend reveals the degree
to which this administration’s commitment to promoting liberty abroad is
undermined by the Democratic Party’s ideological commitment to the promotion of
green-energy initiatives.
In their effort to isolate Vladimir Putin, for example,
the Biden administration seems inclined to welcome Venezuela’s despotic
President Nicolas Maduro back in from the cold. Over the weekend, and for the
first time in years, U.S. representatives sat down for a face-to-face meeting with Venezuelan officials to
negotiate the reintroduction of the country’s crude-oil exports into the global
market. This outreach directly conflicts with the Biden administration’s
support for Juan Guaido, who the administration views as the legitimate Venezuelan
president.
The Biden administration is also reportedly preparing for a potential presidential
visit to Saudi Arabia to both “repair relations and convince the Kingdom to
pump more oil.” The Biden White House has been pressuring the OPEC+ member
states to ramp up production since last summer, and it
welcomed an October 2021 decision by the cartel to do just that.
This undermines the administration’s diplomatic offensive against Riyadh. The
president entered office convinced of the need to end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war against Iran-backed
rebels in Yemen and to treat Saudi Arabia like “the pariah that they are,” in
response to its human-rights abuses. So much for that.
Nowhere are the compromises the White House is making
more apparent than in its headlong rush to cobble together something resembling
a deal with Iran over its nuclear program.
Ahead of a new agreement with Tehran, the Biden
administration shied away from enforcing secondary sanctions against Iranian oil importers,
contributing to a 40 percent increase in the rate of Iranian oil exports in
2021 (primarily, to China and Syria). The urgency associated with the pursuit
of new curbs on Iran’s nuclear program combined with the West’s desperate need
to stabilize the global energy market “could see Iranian oil return to markets
by the third quarter,” Bloomberg reported. That would necessitate billions in
foreign investment to augment Iran’s export capacity, and that influx of capital
would also stabilize one of the world’s most violent and repressive regimes.
Indeed, one of the few remaining obstacles to a new Iran nuclear deal is
Russia, which has been accused of slowing the progress of
talks to drive up energy prices and recoup as much revenue as possible.
Biden officials have dismissed the notion that rolling
back impediments to domestic energy production could have any immediate effect
on the marketplace. They’re right; repealing executive orders prohibiting oil
and gas leasing on federal land, directing executive agencies to restore
spending that could subsidize fossil-fuel producers, and approving stalled but
critical transit networks in the U.S. would not
have an immediate effect on the price of energy. But they would have a
long-term effect by helping restore long-term investment in the development of
new wells, and it would create financial incentives to augment U.S. export capacity.
Now that Germany has been convinced of the need to adopt the kind of
diversified energy-import strategy embraced by states like Poland in the Trump years, the market
opportunity is proven. If our conflict with the Russian regime will be a long
one, we should have an energy policy that is equally far-sighted.
That would be a serious approach to confronting the
geopolitical threat represented by America’s near-peer competitors. And it
would be an approach that preserves as much as possible the West’s claim to
support the aspirations of oppressed peoples everywhere. To prop up the green
fantasy for just a little longer, though, the Biden administration is
sacrificing that advantage. This is a sop to the environmental wing of the
Democratic Party that the Democratic president may soon regret.
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