President Biden Says BYE-BYE To US Energy Independence?

The United States of America has been energy independent since 2019. Under President Donald Trump, the US became the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the world. Yup, just one more thing the media didn't really want to talk about. How did we become the #1 producer of fossil fuels n the world? Well, the main reason is that we have some of the largest reserves in the world right beneath our feet. It's been common knowledge for quite some times that American oil reserves in the ground are the largest in the world, here is an article from The American Oil & Gas Reporter from 2016, but at that time, the then reigning Obama/Biden administration did not feel the need to capitalize on that.

Fast forward to the election of Donald Trump and we see an aggressive effort to increase oil production and exploration. The results as I mentioned were nothing short but global energy dominance. The US surpassed Saudi Arabia and Russia in the extraction and production of crude oil and natural gas respectively. One of the unintended but foreseeable consequences was the fall in oil prices which cumulated in oil future prices actually reaching negative territory for the first time in history in April of 2020. The crisis was quickly averted and it is now clear that the abysmal drop in oil price had more to do with the technicalities of futures and options trading than the actual supply and demand for oil, learn more about that here. Oil prices since have made a decent comeback and the barrels are around $50 bucks at the time of this writing.

Now, where does that leave us? Lets recap. The US has the world's largest oil reserves in its soil, Russia has the most natural gas reserves but the US has the largest production capabilities for it (the US is only #3 for natural gas reserves). Under the Obama/Biden administration we did not take advantage of this natural advantage and there were steps made to actually hinder the US from increasing its power in the energy market. In 2015 the Keystone XL pipeline was rejected by the Obama/Biden white house because of environmental concerns. The project was originally conceived in 2008 and it was fought all the way. When President Trump took office and he signed the permit for the project. According to the Global Energy Institute at the US Chamber of commerce, The pipeline is projected to be a benefit of around $3.4 Billion to the US economy and that is not to speak of the jobs indirectly created by the completion of this marvel of modern engineering and technology.

Well, President Biden has been against continuing this project ever since he's been asked about it, and he literally said he would kill the project. We are currently in a favorable position in terms of energy, we can produce it cheaply and plentifully, and we need lots of it. Yeah, Biden wants to ween us off fossil fuels but what are we going to use while we build up all of the infrastructure required for solar, wind, and hydro? We should continue to use oil and gas and our natural advantage to create an easy transition to renewable energies and we should not jump into it headfirst. In the meantime, Russia is eager to take back over in the production and sale of natural gas and Saudi Arabia is close behind, already increasing its oil production to take up more market space. Our allies are not much help either, Germany is now willingly almost entirely dependent on Russian natural gas! They did not even consider buying from us, they wanted to stick it to Trump and went with the literal worst alternative, an alternative they say is a threat in their region! It is like buying your lunch from your school bully that also takes your lunch money sometimes.

Thanks,

A PunkRock Capitalist