Charlie Brown never wised up, but our oil companies have
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“It’s Appalling:” In Hilarious Reversal, Biden Admin Now Slams Shale For Not Raising Output.
… now that gas prices are the highest on record and the Biden administration is flailing, its approval rating crushed by soaring gas prices and desperately pointing the finger at Putin or any other feces that will stick to the wall, suddenly the president is going for a full U-turn and hoping that everyone has been sufficiently neuralized to forget that on the very first day of his administration, the 79 year old president ordered the closure of the Keystone XL pipeline (in a hilariously titled Executive Order called “Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis“) and froze new drilling leases while pushing for disastrous initiatives that centered on clean energy.
So fast forward to today when ignoring over one year of catastrophic policies, the U.S. State Department’s senior energy security adviser Amos Hochstein – seeing the freefall in White House approval ratings – turned that tables hoping that most Americans are idiots instead of only half, and said that shale companies choosing not to reinvest massive profits into higher production growth at a time of war is “appalling.”
Hammered by policies that discourage evil investments boosting “fossil fuel” output, and under pressure from activist investors to boost cash flows after a decade of weak returns, many publicly traded explorers are limiting production growth to no more than 5%. But that is suddenly at odds with the Biden administration’s efforts to curb soaring inflation and energy prices at home.
So after a year of trying to defang domestic energy companies, the White House – whose Fed Vice Chair candidate Sarah Bloom Raskin even went so far as suggesting to starve energy companies of capital – is now asking producers to raise oil supply to replace Russian crude flows after Biden banned oil imports from the country.
In other words, while yesterday it was Putin’s fault, now it is the fault of shale companies according to an administration that will always find blame anywhere it looks except its own devastating policies.
But beware the “Locked In” argument that’s been used by the Greens to stop new and existing) pipelines, refineries, CNG terminals and anything else that would allow the country to still have access to fossil fuels 10, even 20 years from now. These people oppose any new infrastructure investment that will draw capital from their beloved windmills and solar farms, and even exploring for new sources of oil is being stopped: the goal is to run out of oil, not to find more. They can, and will, tie up new projects for years, especially once the current panic subsides.
You can get a taste of that in what’s going on in Europe right now, as the governments attempt to come up with temporary sources of energy that don’t depend on the goodwill of Russia.
But with Germany announcing plans for two new LNG terminals to increase supplies, some experts are worried that this could increase longer term dependency on fossil fuels.
"I think we're living in a tricky time, that there's so much political pressure to make these energy policy decisions," said Prof Paula Kivimaa from the Finnish Environment Institute and the University of Sussex.
"But we also must look beyond the next couple of years. If Germany builds new LNG infrastructure, there is a risk that it kind of locks it in for the foreseeable future."
The author concludes,
Rooftop solar? in Europe? Northern Europe especially barely sees the sun in winter, when they need extra energy for heating, and even in Summer the sun is fairly low in the sky.
This EU energy plan makes so little sense, it reinforces my opinion that the real agenda is to hope Russia conquers and crushes Ukrainian partisans, so Europe can go back to business as usual, buying energy from Russia.
