Economy
Biden Is Failing The World
You can see that in Poland people are actually burning trash to stay warm. Burning trash in your fireplace creates toxic smoke. It’s hazardous. The government’s considering handing out masks so people can breathe more safely when they’re outdoors.
Recall that natural gas is the reason the United States reduced its carbon emissions more than any other country in the world. Carbon emissions have been on the decline globally, in large measure, because of the transition from coal to gas. Natural gas is something that most reasonable people agree is a superior fuel to coal. Natural gas is the reason the United States reduced its emissions by 22% between 2005 and 2020, which is five percentage points more than the United States had agreed to reduce our emissions under cap and trade legislation, which nearly passed Congress in 2010 and under the UN Paris Climate Agreement.
The above is a graph that was produced by Matthew Yglesias, a well-known progressive blogger. He tweets it out whenever somebody points out that President Biden isn’t doing all he can to expand oil and gas production. It’s accurate. It does show that oil production increased on a daily average under Biden from under Trump. But it’s deeply misleading. You have to remember that under Trump, the Coronavirus pandemic, for several months, massively slashed oil production.
You can see from the below chart of the EIA data on crude oil production that we still haven’t gotten back to where we were before the pandemic. Now consider how the need is much greater for US oil now that Europe and the United States are rejecting Russian oil.Upgrade
The United States is the biggest liquified natural gas exporter, it’s true. But it takes five years to bring online new LNG capacity in the United States. So all of the new LNG that’s come online during Biden’s presidency was due to past presidents.
And Biden has leased less land than any President since World War II. It’s a shockingly small amount of land: 130,000 acres as opposed to seven million acres under Obama, four million acres under Trump, during the first 19 months of their administrations. It’s a huge reduction in the amount of land being leased.
You can see that in some particular cases, like a very large oil and gas sale in Alaska, the Department of Interior claimed there wasn’t any industry interest in the lease. This turned out not to be the case. The Senator from Alaska, Lisa Markowski said, “I can say with full certainty based on conversations as recently as last night, that Alaska’s industry does have an interest in lease sales and the Cook Inlet to claim otherwise is simply false, not to mention stunningly shortsighted.”
People point out the oil and gas industry does have many thousands of leases, and that’s true, but there’s a high degree of uncertainty about whether the leases they have will produce oil and gas at levels that make sense economically to produce from.
So increasing oil and gas leasing at a time of an energy crisis in Europe seems like a no-brainer, but the Biden administration is not doing that. In fact, it’s been preventing the expansion of gas in many other ways.
You can see the Biden administration denied a request to have a formaldehyde regulation exempted. All else being equal, you’d wanna reduce that pollution. But I think a little bit of formaldehyde is gonna be a less toxic airborne event than having people breathing toxic wood and plastic smoke in Europe. The right thing to do, in terms of aiding our allies, would be to wave that regulation. But the Biden administration refused.
You can see that the Biden administration is actively considering forgoing all new offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific. It may do no offshore leases at all for oil and gas.
Instead, the Biden administration has sought to give sanctions relief to Venezuela in the hopes that Venezuela would produce more oil. And of course, most famously Biden went to Saudi Arabia to ask the Saudis to produce more oil in July. Now, everybody agrees that was a huge foreign policy failure. The Saudis announced they would be cutting production with the rest of OPEC+. The Biden administration’s pressure on the Saudis apparently annoyed them. Now, they’ve been pushed closer into the arms of Russia. This is a pretty significant setback for the Biden administration.
At the same time Biden was going to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia to produce more oil. Biden administration was refusing to even meet with oil and gas executives. That’s a pretty serious snub when you consider that it’s an industry you want to expand production.
An oil and gas analyst on Twitter criticized a Senator from Wisconsin for suggesting the Democrats are responsible for the lack of refining capacity. He said, “What — do you also blame a political party for a flat tire?”
I pointed out that a single oil refinery outage would have little impact if we had sufficient refinery capacity, and the reason we don’t is that politicians, mostly Democrats have used regulations to prevent their construction. When I interviewed executives one said to me, “If you were an oil company, why would you invest hundreds of millions of dollars into expanding refining capacity if you thought the federal government would shut you down in the next few years? The narrative coming out of this administration is absolutely insane.”
So you can see here that refinery capacity was increasing all the way through 2020. It then declined due to the pandemic. And it has not risen since then. When the analyst was asked, why don’t we get more refineries? He clearly didn’t know. Or at least he said he didn’t know. But it’s clear the Biden administration has not wanted more refineries.
There was a chance to retrofit a major refinery in the US Virgin Islands. It was a refinery that was older. It needed pretty significant upgrades. It was polluting. But these are machines that can be fixed. Several billion dollars of investment would’ve fixed it and it goes back many years. This is an article from 2008. It describes how, at that time, the Democrats in the Senate killed a proposal for refinery expansion.
Go back to 2006. The same thing happened. The House was in the hands of the Republicans who passed a piece of legislation to expand refineries. And it was the Democrats who killed it. And, incidentally, they’re using the exact same arguments today that they used back then.
More recently, we’ve seen an attack on expanded natural gas pipeline capacity, including from Pennsylvania to the Northeast, particularly to Boston. The result of not having pipeline capacity is that they’ve been burning more oil for electricity in New England. In fact, oil-fired power jumped to a four-year high earlier this year. And they’ve been having to import liquified natural gas to New England rather than just pipe it in, which is significantly cheaper. Probably half as expensive.
Grassroots advocacy and lawsuits have prevented pipelines from being built. You can see there’s a strong correlation between the price of natural gas and the ability to get pipelines built. We stop building pipelines and gas gets more expensive. Globally, the impact is that we’re gonna return to coal. This is the consequence of stifling oil and gas production.
One could argue that we just need more scarcity in order to accelerate the transition to electric cars. But it’s notable that the major figures in this, including President Biden, supporters of President Biden, and representatives of his administration aren’t defending a pro-scarcity position. They’re instead claiming that they’re doing all they can to bring down oil and gas prices and expand production.
I think this data, and the historical chronology, paint a picture that shows that there has, in fact, been a war on natural gas and oil United States and that it is impacting global supplies, and leaving Europe vulnerable.
Click to see the video presentation of this article. Additional slides and graphs are in the video.
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Reporting on cities, energy, and the environment
This article supplied by Troy Media.
By Rashid Husain Syed
The Israel-Iran conflict just flipped the script on falling oil prices, pushing them up fast, and that spike could hit your wallet at the pump
Oil prices are no longer being driven by supply and demand. The sudden escalation of military conflict between Israel and Iran has shattered market stability, reversing earlier forecasts and injecting dangerous uncertainty into the global energy system.
What just days ago looked like a steady decline in oil prices has turned into a volatile race upward, with threats of extreme price spikes looming.
For Canadians, these shifts are more than numbers on a commodities chart. Oil is a major Canadian export, and price swings affect everything from
provincial revenues, especially in Alberta and Saskatchewan, to what you pay at the pump. A sustained spike in global oil prices could also feed inflation, driving up the cost of living across the country.
Until recently, optimism over easing trade tensions between the U.S. and China had analysts projecting oil could fall below US$50 a barrel this year. Brent crude traded at US$66.82, and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) hovered near US$65, with demand growth sluggish, the slowest since the pandemic.
That outlook changed dramatically when Israeli airstrikes on Iranian targets and Tehran’s counterattack, including hits on Israel’s Haifa refinery, sent shockwaves through global markets. Within hours, Brent crude surged to US$74.23, and WTI climbed to US$72.98, despite later paring back overnight gains of over 13 per cent. The conflict abruptly reversed the market outlook and reintroduced a risk premium amid fears of disruption in the world’s critical oil-producing region.
Amid mounting tensions, attention has turned to the Strait of Hormuz—the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman through which nearly 20 per cent of the world’s oil ows, including supplies that inuence global and
Canadian fuel prices. While Iran has not yet signalled a closure, the possibility
remains, with catastrophic implications for supply and prices if it occurs.
Analysts have adjusted forecasts accordingly. JPMorgan warns oil could hit US$120 to US$130 per barrel in a worst-case scenario involving military conflict and a disruption of shipments through the strait. Goldman Sachs estimates Brent could temporarily spike above US$90 due to a potential loss of 1.75 million barrels per day of Iranian supply over six months, partially offset by increased OPEC+ output. In a note published Friday morning, Goldman Sachs analysts Daan Struyven and his team wrote: “We estimate that Brent jumps to a peak just over US$90 a barrel but declines back to the US$60s in 2026 as Iran supply recovers. Based on our prior analysis, we estimate that oil prices may exceed US$100 a barrel in an extreme tail scenario of an extended disruption.”
Iraq’s foreign minister, Fuad Hussein, has issued a more dire warning: “The Strait of Hormuz might be closed due to the Israel-Iran confrontation, and the world markets could lose millions of barrels of oil per day in supplies. This could result in a price increase of between US$200 and US$300 per barrel.”
During a call with German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, Hussein added: “If military operations between Iran and Israel continue, the global market will lose approximately five million barrels per day produced by Iraq and the Gulf states.”
Such a supply shock would worsen inflation, strain economies, and hurt both exporters and importers, including vulnerable countries like Iraq.
Despite some analysts holding to base-case forecasts in the low to mid-US$60s for 2025, that optimism now looks fragile. The oil market is being held hostage by geopolitics, sidelining fundamentals.
What happens next depends on whether the region plunges deeper into conflict or pulls back. But for now, one thing is clear: the calm is over, and oil is once again at the mercy of war.
Toronto-based Rashid Husain Syed is a highly regarded analyst specializing in energy and politics, particularly in the Middle East. In addition to his contributions to local and international newspapers, Rashid frequently lends his expertise as a speaker at global conferences. Organizations such as the Department of Energy in Washington and the International Energy Agency in Paris have sought his insights on global energy matters.
Troy Media empowers Canadian community news outlets by providing independent, insightful analysis and commentary. Our mission is to support local media in helping Canadians stay informed and engaged by delivering reliable content that strengthens community connections and deepens understanding across the country.
From Resource Now
Alberta renews call for West Coast oil pipeline amid shifting federal, geopolitical dynamics.
Just six months ago, talk of resurrecting some version of the Northern Gateway pipeline would have been unthinkable. But with the election of Donald Trump in the U.S. and Mark Carney in Canada, it’s now thinkable.
In fact, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith seems to be making Northern Gateway 2.0 a top priority and a condition for Alberta staying within the Canadian confederation and supporting Mark Carney’s vision of making Canada an Energy superpower. Thanks to Donald Trump threatening Canadian sovereignty and its economy, there has been a noticeable zeitgeist shift in Canada. There is growing support for the idea of leveraging Canada’s natural resources and diversifying export markets to make it less vulnerable to an unpredictable southern neighbour.
“I think the world has changed dramatically since Donald Trump got elected in November,” Smith said at a keynote address Wednesday at the Global Energy Show Canada in Calgary. “I think that’s changed the national conversation.” Smith said she has been encouraged by the tack Carney has taken since being elected Prime Minister, and hopes to see real action from Ottawa in the coming months to address what Smith said is serious encumbrances to Alberta’s oil sector, including Bill C-69, an oil and gas emissions cap and a West Coast tanker oil ban. “I’m going to give him some time to work with us and I’m going to be optimistic,” Smith said. Removing the West Coast moratorium on oil tankers would be the first step needed to building a new oil pipeline line from Alberta to Prince Rupert. “We cannot build a pipeline to the west coast if there is a tanker ban,” Smith said. The next step would be getting First Nations on board. “Indigenous peoples have been shut out of the energy economy for generations, and we are now putting them at the heart of it,” Smith said.
Alberta currently produces about 4.3 million barrels of oil per day. Had the Northern Gateway, Keystone XL and Energy East pipelines been built, Alberta could now be producing and exporting an additional 2.5 million barrels of oil per day. The original Northern Gateway Pipeline — killed outright by the Justin Trudeau government — would have terminated in Kitimat. Smith is now talking about a pipeline that would terminate in Prince Rupert. This may obviate some of the concerns that Kitimat posed with oil tankers negotiating Douglas Channel, and their potential impacts on the marine environment.
One of the biggest hurdles to a pipeline to Prince Rupert may be B.C. Premier David Eby. The B.C. NDP government has a history of opposing oil pipelines with tooth and nail. Asked in a fireside chat by Peter Mansbridge how she would get around the B.C. problem, Smith confidently said: “I’ll convince David Eby.”
“I’m sensitive to the issues that were raised before,” she added. One of those concerns was emissions. But the Alberta government and oil industry has struck a grand bargain with Ottawa: pipelines for emissions abatement through carbon capture and storage.
The industry and government propose multi-billion investments in CCUS. The Pathways Alliance project alone represents an investment of $10 to $20 billion. Smith noted that there is no economic value in pumping CO2 underground. It only becomes economically viable if the tradeoff is greater production and export capacity for Alberta oil. “If you couple it with a million-barrel-per-day pipeline, well that allows you $20 billion worth of revenue year after year,” she said. “All of a sudden a $20 billion cost to have to decarbonize, it looks a lot more attractive when you have a new source of revenue.” When asked about the Prince Rupert pipeline proposal, Eby has responded that there is currently no proponent, and that it is therefore a bridge to cross when there is actually a proposal. “I think what I’ve heard Premier Eby say is that there is no project and no proponent,” Smith said. “Well, that’s my job. There will be soon. “We’re working very hard on being able to get industry players to realize this time may be different.” “We’re working on getting a proponent and route.”
At a number of sessions during the conference, Mansbridge has repeatedly asked speakers about the Alberta secession movement, and whether it might scare off investment capital. Alberta has been using the threat of secession as a threat if Ottawa does not address some of the province’s long-standing grievances. Smith said she hopes Carney takes it seriously. “I hope the prime minister doesn’t want to test it,” Smith said during a scrum with reporters. “I take it seriously. I have never seen separatist sentiment be as high as it is now. “I’ve also seen it dissipate when Ottawa addresses the concerns Alberta has.” She added that, if Carney wants a true nation-building project to fast-track, she can’t think of a better one than a new West Coast pipeline. “I can’t imagine that there will be another project on the national list that will generate as much revenue, as much GDP, as many high paying jobs as a bitumen pipeline to the coast.”
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