Let U.S. Energy Producers Produce

By Hunter Baker, Associate Professor of Political Science and University Fellow

Mar 10, 2022 -

Around the United States, the price of gasoline is heading well into uncharted territory. For the U.S. president, Joe Biden, the prices listed on prominent lighted signs throughout American communities read like the mercury on a thermometer threatening to blow out the top. Although gasoline is not the thing Americans spend most of their money on, the sensitive number on those gas station signs acts like a kind of barometer of the national mood. When it is low, we feel reassured and as if things are going our way. When it is unusually high, we labor under a sense of foreboding.

When you put together conflict with Russia, general inflation, and soaring oil and gas prices, it becomes clear that the stars almost seem to be aligning for the Biden administration to follow in the footsteps of the ill-fated Carter White House of the late 1970’s. To speak of the movements of stars and the machinations of fate is inappropriate here, though, because there is little doubt that Joe Biden’s policies have contributed to the American crisis in material ways.

Without waiting for already existing massive stimulus spending to work its way through the system, President Biden signed an additional nearly $2 trillion COVID relief measure not long after taking office. Before the Russia-Ukraine conflict kicked into high gear, we were already feeling the general inflationary effect of literally trillions of dollars sloshing through the system and raising prices. But it is really with regard to oil and gas that Biden’s policies proved to be badly timed.

Shortly after taking his oath, President Biden signed an executive order that reduced American domestic oil production by limiting drilling and inhibited future flows by withdrawing permission for the continued construction of the XL pipeline. At the same time, environmentally minded fund operators on Wall Street (known for use of ESG scoring systems – Environment, Social, Governance) began to act aggressively to limit the access of oil and natural gas companies to capital. The result has been a scissors action of both the government and business left to undercut oil and gas production.

As a result, U.S. production fell at exactly the wrong time. Prices were already high because of falling production and inflationary forces, but the American cutback increased the strength of producers such as Russia and the Middle East, which includes Iran. Combined with the German decision to abandon nuclear power and to renew a kind of Ostpolitik with the Russians, it is not surprising that Vladimir Putin surmised that he held the upper hand and could carry out his designs for Ukraine. The strategic blunder on the part of the U.S. and Europe does nothing to excuse the naked aggression of the Russian government, but it has acted to enable it to some degree.

What the current crisis demonstrates is that the world is safer and more stable when the United States and Europe continue to be strong producers of oil, natural gas, and nuclear energy. None of this is to say that environmental concerns are negligible. They are not. And even if carbon was not a problem, we would eventually have to work with renewables because fossil fuels are finite. But it is not acceptable to act as though the world does not need fossil fuels when it is blindingly obvious that we still do. And it is cynical to the nth degree to limit U.S. production of oil and gas while turning to the Middle East and Russia to make up the difference. How can we possibly be better off strengthening regimes that threaten neighbors and have a destabilizing effect on world politics?

It shouldn’t be difficult to see that some of the biggest advances in electric automobiles, for example, have occurred during this past period of massive U.S. oil production. We do not have to artificially knock out the oil producers in order to build a bridge to the future. Instead, we should continue to encourage innovation with new technologies until they become so efficient, so cost-effective, and perhaps even superior in terms of performance that our need for oil diminishes in an organic fashion.

But in the meantime, the price at the pump is skyrocketing, which only works to enrich the authors of the crisis. The president has done a good job working within the parameters of this international conflict. He deserves credit for acting as a true leader within NATO. But it is critical for the political left and the Wall Street left to understand that when it comes to oil and natural gas, wishing for them to go away or exercising political will to choke them off is a terrible approach to geopolitics and for the lives of ordinary people.

This column originally appeared in World Opinion on March 10, 2022