Debate fueled as Biden taps key petroleum stockpile

Well-paid jobs

As the White House strives to ease gasoline prices, it is also focused on shifting away from fossil fuels.

Its March 31 statement said: "The President will call on Congress to pass his plan to speed the transition to clean energy that is made in America. His plan will help ensure that America creates millions of good-paying union jobs in clean, cutting-edge industries for generations to come.

"And it will save American families money in the immediate future－including more than $950 a year in gas savings from taking advantage of electric vehicles, and an additional $500 a year from using clean electricity like solar and heat pumps to power their homes."

Biden also said he would use the Defense Production Act, or DPA, to help produce the materials needed for electric vehicle batteries.

The White House said the DPA will "support the production and processing of minerals and materials used for large-capacity batteries, such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and manganese－and the Department of Defense will implement this authority using strong environmental, labor, community, and tribal consultation standards. The sectors supported by these large-capacity batteries－transportation and power－account for more than half of our nation's carbon emissions."

With the move away from petroleum and into battery-powered electric vehicles, is the US caught in a painful market shift?

An editorial in The Wall Street Journal on March 31 stated: "President Biden knows inflation and gasoline prices are killing Democrats in the polls, and he's scrambling to show he's doing something about it. Except he still won't do what would really make a difference: take his foot off the neck of the US oil and gas industry.

"Markets don't respond only to short-term demand and supply fluctuations. They also take into account long-term expectations and policy signals. And the Administration continues to signal that its goal is to bankrupt oil and gas producers. But before shooting them, Mr. Biden wants their political help.

"If the President really wanted to reduce oil prices, he would give a speech announcing a complete halt to his Administration's war on the US industry. Prices might drop $20 per barrel."

In an interview on Fox News on Friday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, saw political reasons behind the rise in energy prices. "Don't blame the gas prices on (Russian President Vladimir) Putin," he said.

"It is a reaction to the shutdown of the fossil fuel industry. They (the Democrats) go after them in every single conceivable way. What we ought to be doing is pumping more of our own to take care of not only our needs, but to help the Europeans as well."

Other factors have affected gasoline prices for some time.

The market tumult has its roots in the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in earnest in March 2020, when demand for and production of oil plummeted. As countries began to emerge from the more severe stretches of the pandemic, demand rebounded, along with a strong public desire to resume traveling.

But OPEC and Russia restored oil production on their own timetables and did not respond to calls to increase output.