On his campaign swing to help Democrats, President Joe Biden has said he will close down coal plants and that he has already put an end to drilling for oil on American land.
“No one is building new coal plants, because they can’t rely on it, even if they have all the coal guaranteed for the rest of their existence of the plant,” Biden said in a speech in California. “So it’s going to become a wind generation. We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar.”
On Saturday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tried to walk the remarks back: “The president’s remarks yesterday have been twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended; he regrets it if anyone hearing these remarks took offense.”
But that wasn’t the end of it. In New York, as he was stumping for Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul, he made an impromptu comment to a climate protester at Sarah Lawrence College, when the president said he had ended drilling for oil.
“No more drilling,” he said. When the protestor persisted, he shot back, “There is no more drilling. I haven’t formed any new drilling.” And when the protester raised off-shore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, he doubled down on shutting down off-shore fields: “That was before I was president. We’re trying to work on that to get that done.”
When Biden became president, the average price of gas was $2.37 per gallon, a price that has jumped to over $5 a gallon and is now down to $3.80 a gallon on average in the Lower 48. That lower price is due to the draining of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by Biden over the past year. Biden has blamed the rise of gas on oil company greed, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Last week he threatened to tax oil companies with a windfall profits tax if they don’t lower their prices. Oil is a commodity, the price of which is set by world markets in a free-market and highly volatile, highly regulated environment.
The Biden Administration has leased fewer acres for oil and gas drilling than at any time since World War II. Since he took office, Biden has also drained the National Petroleum Reserve, bringing it from 638 million barrels to 400 million barrels, a 37% decline and the lowest level since 1984.
Inventories of diesel are now below the accepted emergency levels, and the United States had just a 25 day supply of diesel three weeks ago, according to the Energy Information Agency, as reported by Business Insider. This is the lowest level of diesel supply since 2008, and the fuel is expected to be in short supply until at least summer, which may continue to put pressure on family budgets, as the cost of food and other goods will reflect higher shipping costs.
