I took the featured photo of this post at 9:45 AM this morning. $4.09 for non-ethanol gas, which is the only gas I will use unless I absolutely have to use ethanol.
Before Biden, I never paid more than $2.80 a gallon for non-ethanol gas. This is Oklahoma. Freaking Oklahoma!! Now I’m super glad I don’t live back in Illinois.
We’ve felt pain at the pump before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now it will get worse, especially if the administration bans Russian oil imports.
Instead of opening the Keystone Pipeline XL or opening new fields in America, the Biden administration turned its eyes to Saudi Arabia along with Venezuela.
By the way, Venezuela is besties with Russia.
Yes, let’s rely on more dictatorships instead of ourselves. From Axios:
Why it matters: A hat-in-hand trip would illustrate the gravity of the global energy crisis driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Biden has chastised Saudi Arabia, and the CIA believes its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was involved in the dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
So we won’t import oil from Russia because it invaded Ukraine but we’ll buy oil from countries that do not respect basic human rights. Make total sense.
We’ll sanction Russia and block them out but ease sanctions against Venezuela, which relies on three of our enemies for its oil sector:
The proposals being discussed in the Venezuelan capital would ease sanctions for a limited period on U.S. national security grounds. Since the Trump administration began turning the economic screws on Venezuela in 2017 and then leveled sanctions on the oil sector in 2019, Caracas has come to rely on China, Russia and Iran to keep its oil sector afloat. As of 2020, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, the country’s state oil company, was producing about 300,000 barrels a day.By easing the sanctions now, the U.S. would redirect Venezuelan oil exports out of an opaque China-bound export network and back to Gulf Coast refiners that process the heavy crude Venezuela produces, people familiar with the administration’s thinking on the matter said.It also would peel Caracas out of the political orbit of Russia, which has helped Venezuela sidestep U.S. sanctions by putting its financial system to work processing payments for PDVSA, as the Venezuelan state oil company is known. And sanctions relief would replace Iran’s supply of condensate—a very light oil that PDVSA uses to dilute its extra-heavy oil—with Western-supplied diluents like naphtha, according to people familiar with the Biden administration’s strategy.
The U.S. and U.S. even spoke up for Libyan oil fields:
“Blocking oil production deprives all Libyans from their major source of revenue,” said Stephanie Williams, the U.N. special adviser on Libya, in a statement. “The oil blockade should be lifted.”Richard Norland, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, echoed Williams’s remarks, arguing for an end to the shutdown.Oil production in Libya has significantly dropped since the two fields were shut down over local conflicts. The state-run National Oil Corporation told Reuters that the closures cost Libya $160 million a day in revenue and have diminished the country’s oil output by 330,000 barrels.
Um, something tells me Williams and Norland took this approach so the West can replace Russian oil. Timing is off and I don’t believe in coincidences.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
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