Biden's wrong answer to fossil fuel economy

 Washington Examiner:

“I want to emphasize: Demand destruction or demand slowdowns is not a fix to this problem,” Jeff Currie, global head of commodities at Goldman Sachs, said last Thursday. “There is only one long-term fix to this problem, and that is investment — harnessing large amounts of capital into this space to de-bottleneck it … And, at this point in the game, we still don’t see large-scale investment.”

The problem to which Currie was referring is the price of gasoline, which ranges from $6 to $8 in the United States. It is a problem that portends massive Democratic losses this November and for which President Joe Biden is doing everything he can to evade responsibility.

Currie’s point was that the “old economy,” as he called it, requires sustained capital investment — oil exploration, refineries, pipelines, etc.

Currie’s words, in fact, echo those of ExxonMobil's recent scathing statement, issued after the company grew tired of being scapegoated by Biden and Democrats for the high gasoline prices that their party platform explicitly supports.

“In the short term, the U.S. government could enact measures often used in emergencies following hurricanes or other supply disruptions — such as waivers of Jones Act provisions and some fuel specifications to increase supplies,” the statement reads. “Longer term, government can promote investment through clear and consistent policy that supports U.S. resource development, such as regular and predictable lease sales, as well as streamlined regulatory approval and support for infrastructure such as pipelines.”

This is yet another national problem Biden has made appreciably worse. His administration’s failure to give either “streamlined regulatory approval” for oil exploration or to hold “regular and predictable lease sales” has been a calculated effort to hobble an industry liberals hate and want to see disappear. But of course, it isn’t the extent of the damage he has done on the supply side of the energy industry.

Oil production, for example, could be much higher now if not for Biden’s initial attacks on the energy industry, beginning the moment he took office. If not for his and Barack Obama’s malign interference, pure pandering to a crowd of ignorant environmentalists, the Keystone Pipeline would have been fully functional for years by now.

Biden is additionally exacerbating the supply side of the problem and creating another needless bottleneck by tightening the screws on refiners.

His Environmental Protection Agency is imposing a new and totally unrealistic biofuel mandate rule. This will compound several problems by forcing the use of scarce cereal crops (remember the Ukraine War?) as an expensive fuel, forcing food prices even higher. Meanwhile, the administration is forcing refiners to purchase credits that were already exceedingly expensive. They can try to get a waiver, but Biden’s EPA has just denied 69 refineries’ applications for waivers.

...

Biden's energy policy makes no sense.  He is cutting American production and asking foreign suppliers to increase production to make up the difference.  He is telling Americans to transition to a different source of fuel that does not exist in commercial quantities.   He is pushing unreliable and unavailable alternative fuels.