Old North News

As North Carolinians continue to feel pain at the pump, President Joe Biden has stifled American energy production since he entered office in his effort to end fossil fuels completely. Yet, he is urging other countries to increase their production while also sending our emergency supply of crude oil overseas.

U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) took to Twitter to point out Biden's hypocrisy when it comes to energy  production.

"Biden won't unleash American energy because of environmental concerns, Biggs posted. "Yet, he is shipping our oil to China—the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Talk about hypocrisy."

The Biden administration exported 5 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to countries in Europe and Asia last month, a recent Reuters report said. Cargoes of SPR crude were sent to the Netherlands and to a Reliance refinery in India. Additionally, a third cargo is headed to China and U.S. Customs data shows the fourth-largest U.S. oil refiner, Phillips 66, shipped approximately 470,000 barrels of sour crude from the Big Hill SPR storage site in Texas to Trieste, Italy.

On March 31, Biden announced the release up to 180 million barrels of crude oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) over the ensuing six months in an effort to curb high gas prices. The president claimed there would be a slight delay in the decline of gas prices by days or weeks, but the prices would drop by an unknown range.

"It could come down fairly significantly," he said. "It could come down [to] a better part of anything from 10 cents to 35 cents a gallon, it's unknown at this point."

Biden is encouraging other countries to increase their production of oil.

"All the Gulf states are meeting," Biden said in a recent news conference in Madrid following a NATO summit, quoted in a Bloomberg report. "I have indicated to them that I thought they should be increasing production. I hope we see them, in their own interest, concluding that makes sense to do."

Biden has taken action to remove fossil fuels entirely across the country, from killing the Keystone XL pipeline to banning oil and gas leasing on federal land, which had provided approximately one-fifth of the total production in the United States as of 2019; a report issued by the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources said.

When he entered office in January 2021, Biden signed a series of executive orders that prioritized climate change, CNBC reported.

The president is set to travel to Saudi Arabia in mid-July, a trip that "is poised to be a significant moment for gasoline prices," the Bloomberg report said. The stakes will be high for the oil market because "Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the only countries with significant spare capacity to pump crude." If those two OPEC members do not pledge to boost production, Biden would reportedly "lose a powerful tool for alleviating the economic and political pain caused by high fuel prices."

As of July 8, North Carolina's average for gasoline was $4.36 per gallon, American Automobile Association (AAA) data showed—$1.45 higher than at the same time last year.