Biden Release From Strategic Reserve Is a Slick Trick With a Troubling Kicker – Opinion

As we previously reported last week, the Biden team was going to tap the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve claiming that they would be releasing 50 million barrels “to lower prices for Americans and address the mismatch between demand exiting the pandemic and supply.”

There are however a few issues with the story.

What’s the point of tapping our reserves, while limiting our ability to produce oil more efficiently? This is exactly what Biden was doing. This would not only reduce our ability to produce oil in an emergency, but also harm our energy independence. It’s a truly warped policy approach.

While some Democrats begged for a release from the reserve to help with the rising gas prices, a lot of the oil that was released wouldn’t even be going to American refineries. According to Bloomberg, a “large portion” of the 50 million barrels would go to China and India.

Even as Biden is claiming he’s doing this to help lower prices for Americans, the oil is going to prop up one of our foes — China. Not to mention that if he’s so concerned about climate change and being green why is he sending fossil fuels to China, the biggest polluter? To do this, why would you need to deplete your reserves? Biden is concerned about reducing fossil fuel usage, but not China’s.

They’re selling 18 million barrels to China and India.

Bloomberg

That’s because the supplies will consist of sour crude, a type of oil that U.S. refiners are shunning due to its high sulfur content, which makes it more expensive to process. For some foreign buyers, though, U.S. sour crude is attractive because it’s much cheaper than the global Brent benchmark.

So how exactly is that serving Biden’s green dreams? Of course, those dreams seem to only apply to the U.S., Biden doesn’t seem to have an issue with selling fossil fuel to our foes. And if our refineries don’t want to refine it, why is it in our reserves? Do we need more regulations to protect our interests?

Biden likely wouldn’t have needed to do any of this had he just not started a war on our energy independence, if he’d just left what President Donald Trump had done in place. Biden cut Keystone XL’s pipeline and cost thousands of jobs. He is also investigating the impact of cutting Line 5, which is essential for the supply of oil to America, to determine what that would mean. He also lifted sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to help Russia.

All this has led to rising prices. Now, the average price for regular is $3.39, compared to $2.127 last year. California has a higher average.

AAA reports that on November 29, the California average gasoline cost was $4.71. https://t.co/tNn2PLwbMa

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) November 29, 2021

Andrew Malcolm pointed out that the release was more propaganda than anything.

First of all, it’s a drop in the barrel, literally. May seem large, But it’s merely eight percent of the reserve. That’s less than three days’ average U.S. domestic oil use and only 44 hours of OPEC production.

This latest action, with the release and the sale, leaves us with more questions — a completely problematic approach.