National Review
Dear Weekend Jolter,
So who’s going to tell the Biden administration that oil extracted from Venezuela is just as bad for the environment as oil extracted from Texas?
This week’s scramble to convince mustachioed socialists and dismemberment-prone princes to boost petroleum production certainly served to expose the folly of our energy approach. That is, limits on U.S. oil and gas production (and their transportation) don’t achieve much in the name of climate if we need to ratchet up output elsewhere to keep prices stable. And they lead to clear geopolitical downsides when the “elsewhere” is places such as Caracas.
Kevin Williamson discusses what some foresight could have yielded, had we favored “democratic energy” over that produced under the auspices of maniacs:
The basic geopolitical question is: Should the United States throw a lifeline to the worst tyrant in the Western hemisphere in order to undermine an even worse tyrant in Europe? . . .
Right about now, President Biden must be wishing he had an extra pipeline to Canada. The thought has occurred to Alberta premier Jason Kenney, who observes about Keystone XL: “If President Biden had not vetoed that project, it would be done later this year — 840,000 barrels of democratic energy that could have displaced the 600,000 plus barrels of Russian conflict oil that’s filled with the blood of Ukrainians.”
Oops.
The Biden administration took a bold step this week in shutting down Russian energy imports over Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and it should be commended for this — even if it happened under duress. But the U.S. could have been better positioned for soaring energy prices resulting from global conflict and other factors, reducing the need to solicit the Maduro regime, MBS, and possibly the mullahs for help. While a renewed all-of-the-above energy strategy is not going to solve the immediate crisis, Kevin speculates that, given domestic political pressures, the administration prefers turning to Venezuela rather than pursuing such a strategy even in the long-term…
