From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

Joe Biden and his appointees took an abundance of costly and damaging policy actions during his four-year term in office. Fortunately, that damaging agenda was limited to a single term presidency by voters last November who had grown weary of footing the massive bills for it all in the form of constantly increasing prices for all forms of energy.

Now the task of cleaning it all up and repairing the damage falls to President Donald Trump and his appointees. In another fortunate development for America, the President has chosen an eager and extremely talented array of energy-related appointees, including EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

One of the costliest actions taken by ex-President Biden related to U.S. national security came when he decided to raid the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by using it as a campaign tool to influence the 2022 mid-term elections. Early that year, Biden invoked a program to rapidly deplete the contents of the SPR, pulling 1 million barrels per day from the underground salt caverns which hold the crude for 180 days in hopes of lowering gas prices at the pump.

In an interview this week with radio host Glenn Beck, Secretary Wright revealed that, by drawing the volumes down so rapidly, Biden caused damage to the integrity of those salt caverns so severe that his Energy Department will now have to spend a big piece of its budget repairing the infrastructure before the caverns can be refilled. “[Biden] flooded the market with oil, reduced the price of oil in the short term but at the cost of U.S. strategic positioning, and they damaged the facilities in the Strategic petroleum reserve by draining them so fast,” Wright told Beck, adding, “We have to spend over $100 million to repair the damage of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that wasn’t built for that.”

For readers who may not be aware, Congress and President Gerald Ford authorized the creation of the SPR in 1975 in the wake of the first Arab Oil Embargo of 1973-74 That embargo caused severe shortages of gasoline, along with price spikes across the United States. Congress intended the SPR as a tool whose careful deployment would enhance and protect national security in times of real emergencies, not one to be used for cynical political purposes.

“It’s for when a very bad day happens,” Wright put it to Beck. “The world literally runs on oil. If you don’t have oil, you’re screwed in everything you do – economics, defense, health care, anything.”

In March, Secretary Wright unveiled an aggressive plan to refill the SPR, estimating the cost of doing so at the $70 per barrel price that prevailed at the time to be about $20 billion. He also estimated it would take 4 to 6 years to complete the process due to the magnitude of Biden’s unwise withdrawals. Filling the reserve is not something that can be done all in a single transaction. Rather, it is a complex process governed by regulations which require DOE to solicit competitive bids for relatively small lots of crude.

“By design, it’s much slower to fill it than to drain it,” Wright told Beck. “It will take us, going flat out, four, five, six years to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We are dead set committed to do it, but we’ve compromised our national security for years to get a little bit of an electoral advantage in 2022.”

It should be noted here that Wright would love to take advantage of current low oil prices, which have dropped to around $60/bbl today. Obviously, the same “buy low, sell high” philosophy followed by smart stock investors applies to buying and selling crude oil, too.

But DOE’s buyback program cannot begin until the damage caused by Biden’s careless disregard for national security has been repaired. Doing that will require months, during which time oil prices could rise or drop significantly.

“Energy is the infrastructure of life,” Wright reminded Beck. “You can’t use it for politics.”

But unfortunately for U.S. national security, Joe Biden did just that. The mess he left behind is Wright’s to clean up.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

Marjorie Mallare at Imperial Oil’s Strathcona refinery. 

Fr0m the Canadian Energy Centre

By Cody Ciona

Mallare manages an all-female team of engineers helping keep operations smooth and safe

As the utilities and hydroprocessing technical lead for Imperial Oil’s Strathcona Refinery near Edmonton, 32-year-old Marjorie Mallare and her team help ensure operations run smoothly and safely at one of Canada’s largest industrial facilities.

The exciting part, she says, is that all four engineers she leads are female.

It’s part of the reason Mallare was named one of ten Young Women in Energy award winners for 2025.

“I hope they realize how important the work that they do is, inspiring and empowering women, connecting women and recognizing women in our industry,” she says.

“That can be very pivotal for young women, or really any young professional that is starting off their career.”

Born and raised in the Philippines, Mallare and her family moved to Edmonton near the end of junior high school.

Living in the industrial heartland of Alberta, it was hard not to see the opportunity present in the oil and gas industry.

When she started post-secondary studies at the University of Alberta in the early 2010s, the industry was booming.

“The amount of opportunities, at least when I started university, which was around 2011, was one of the high periods in our industry at the time. So, it was definitely very attractive,” Mallare says.

When choosing a discipline, engineering stood out.

“At the time, chemical engineering had the most number of females, so that was a contributing factor,” she says.

“Just looking at what’s available within the province, within the city, chemical engineering just seemed to offer a lot more opportunities, a lot more companies that I could potentially work for.”

Through work co-ops in oil and gas, her interest in a career in the industry continued to grow.

“It just kind of naturally happened. That drew my interest more and more, and it made it easier to find future opportunities,” Mallare says.

Following a work practicum with Imperial Oil and graduation, she started working with the company full time.

On the side, Mallare has also driven STEM outreach programs, encouraging young women to pursue careers in engineering.

In addition to supporting the Strathcona Refinery’s operations department, Mallare and her team work on sustainability-focused projects and reducing the refinery’s carbon footprint.

The 200,000 barrel per day facility represents about 30 per cent of Western Canada’s refining capacity.

“Eventually, our group will also be responsible for running the new renewable diesel unit that we’re planning to commission later this year,” says Mallare.

Once completed, the $720 million project will be the largest renewable diesel facility in Canada, producing more than one billion litres of biofuel annually.

Projects like these are why Mallare believes Canada will continue to be a global energy leader.

“We’re leading others already with regards to pursuing more sustainable alternatives and reducing our carbon footprints overall. That’s not something we should lose sight of.”