Opinion

Thanks to Biden’s war on energy, Americans are paying more — and Putin wins

How much is President Joe Biden’s war on US energy costing you and all Americans?

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the world oil price has been wildly fluctuating, but Monday it was just shy of $100 a barrel. 

Yet Biden is pushing forward with his war on American fossil fuels as part of his and the left’s climate-change obsession.

Just last week, his administration put new restrictions on building liquefied-natural-gas terminals in the United States, which are needed to liquefy our abundant (and clean) natural gas and place it in tankers to be shipped to Europe and the rest of the world. The cancellation of oil and gas pipelines, such as the Keystone XL, and gas-drilling permits in Alaska, Texas and other oil-rich states have also lowered our domestic production. 

President Joe Biden is trying his best to decrease gas prices, as it continues to become a big issue for Americans. CNP

Compare the peak oil-production months under President Donald Trump’s energy-independence policies to the latest production numbers under Biden: The Energy Information Administration’s data show that the United States is producing roughly 1.2 million fewer barrels oil per day.

So the math here is fairly straightforward: 1.2 million barrels times $100 a day is a deadweight loss to the United States of slightly more than $100 million every day. When Trump left office in January 2021, we were energy independent. Today, we rely on Russia and OPEC nations to fill up our tanks and heat our homes. 

Think of Biden’s energy policy as a $100 million per day foreign-aid program for our adversaries in Iran, Russia and OPEC nations.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin are benefiting from the rising gas prices, as Americans suffer. Alexei Druzhinin

Every barrel we don’t produce in Texas and Alaska puts money into the coffers of Russian President Vladimir Putin, helping finance his war machine. Putin loves high oil and gas prices. Chinese President Xi Jinping is also benefiting from Biden’s war on American energy, with his country building dozens of coal plants.

And what does this $100 million loss seven days a week mean for the US economy? With that much more national income each day, we could build eight to 12 schools every day. We could create 1,000 six-figure jobs a day. Annually, with the extra $40 billion we could help clean up every toxic waste dump in America or clean our rivers and streams. We could put scrubbers on every coal plant and fix leaks in every gas pipeline that crisscrosses America. 

Such cleanups would do a lot more good for the environment than the delusional dream that somehow by not producing our own oil, gas and coal, the rest of the world will follow suit and we will save the planet from rising temperatures. 

Gas prices are displayed at a Mobil station in Los Angeles Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. T Ringo Chiu

Biden says he is “doing everything he can” to bring down gas prices. Wrong. When the supply of a product falls, its price rises. When Trump left office, the price of oil was at roughly $2.59 a gallon nationally. Now it is $3.49 and headed to more than $4 a gallon (and $5 a gallon in California and New York) at the gas pump. 

This means the rise in oil prices is raising the cost of a fill-up by almost $20. Home heating costs are up almost one-third, and in many areas of the country this means an extra $100 a month to stay warm. 

That’s your share of the $100 million daily Biden energy-inflation tax. And what adds insult to injury is that this tax isn’t going to our government or helping American companies and workers. No, arguably the planet’s biggest beneficiaries of these high energy prices is Vladimir Putin — who is laughing all the way to the bank.

Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at FreedomWorks, co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity and co-author of “Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on American Energy.”