Rising Gas Prices Have Nothing to Do With Biden

Yesterday, in response to this blog (lol), President Joe Biden announced he was banning all oil imported from Russia. In the comments section, I was deluged with comments insisting that Biden has slowed oil and gas production. He killed the Keystone Pipeline, some say, even though Trump himself acknowledged that its completion would only have a minimal effect on prices at the pump.

While Biden has committed numerous blunders during his first year in office, he is by no means responsible for the rising gasoline prices at the pump.  Yesterday, a White House fact sheet and Biden himself responded to what are obviously partisan attempts to lay the blame at his doorstep.  

"U.S. oil and gas production is approaching record highs, while thousands of drilling permits on federal lands go unused. Federal policies are not limiting the production of oil and gas. To the contrary, the Biden Administration has been clear that in the short-term, supply must keep up with demand, at home and around the world while we make the shift to a secure clean energy future. We are one of the world’s largest producers with a strong domestic oil and gas industry. Natural gas production has never been higher, and crude oil production is expected to hit a new high next year. Oil and gas companies, and the finance firms that back them, should not use Putin’s war as an excuse for excess price increases or padding profits, and, as major energy company leaders have themselves said, they have the resources and incentives they need to further increase production in the United States."

Yo be sure, we could easily produce all the oil we need from our own reserves. Yet, we are a net importer of oil, with about seven per cent coming from Russia. Why have we imported oil when our own reserves could make us self-sufficient? Cost. The cost of extracting those reserves is more expensive than the imported oil. That;s the real reason why the Keystone Pipeline was dead before Biden assumed office. It's why the fracking industry had gone tets up. 

Now that the cost of importing oil is rising, it's clear some of those thousands of drilling permits will get used. This has nothing to do with Biden and everything to do with supply and demand, which is supposed to be a cherished principle of capitalists. 

At the same time, we really need to rethink the way we use energy. The way we use fossil fuel is poisoning our planet. I am also well aware that solar and wind energy are weather-dependent. Nuclear fission can be dangerous. 

As a matter of national security, we should be devoting a great deal of research into nuclear fusion as an energy source. Nuclear fusion is what powers the sun. In the plasma core, four hydrogen atoms fuse into one helium atom. In the process, a massive amount of energy is released.  

If we can harness this kind of energy, it would be clean and there'd be no danger of meltdowns or radioactive waste.  Thus far, the amount of energy needed to create fusion exceeds the energy produced. 

Britain and France have had breakthroughs in harnessing this form of energy. China appears to be closer than anyone.