Quote:After blocking such sanctions last year using a national security waiver, the Biden administration announced Wednesday it would allow sanctions on the company in charge of building Russia’s Nord Stream 2, a natural gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany’s Baltic coast. While the sanctions are one of many possible responses to counter a Russian invasion of Ukraine, the reversal invites the question of why the Biden administration empowered President Vladimir Putin with increased power over global energy supplies in the first place.

In 2019, under former President Donald Trump, the United States became energy independent for the first time in 62 years, meaning we produced more energy than we consumed and exported more than we imported. The Trump administration achieved this in part by streamlining regulations that hindered U.S. pipelines and natural gas development on federal lands.

When President Joe Biden took office, he reversed this progress. In an attempt to appease climate activists, his administration placed moratoriums on oil and gas leases on federal lands and made it harder and more expensive to produce natural gas.

In May 2021, the Biden administration officially reversed Trump-era sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, allowing the project to move forward despite bipartisan opposition in Congress and warnings from former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that doing so would undermine American national security. During the same period, the Biden administration obstructed pipeline development at home and in some cases killed these projects altogether. Pipelines are OK so long as they’re not in our own backyard, so the logic goes.

Lost Independence
Now, America is no longer energy independent, and instead of the United States exporting natural gas to Europe, these nations look to Russia. Not only does Russia have an obvious track record of manipulating energy costs for its political benefits, it is also much less environmentally conscious, and therefore ends up releasing more emissions than the United States does when producing the same natural gas.

For an administration expressing alarm about climate change, this is not a good look. Of course, it also handed Russia — an aggressive, corrupt, authoritarian human rights disaster — massive geopolitical power that we’re watching Putin leverage today.

In Germany, for example, well more than half of the country’s natural-gas imports come from Russia. “This partly reflects Germany’s high dependence on gas in its energy mix, after the country phased out nuclear energy and is now exiting coal-generated power under a plan to shift entirely to renewable sources by 2045,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

This is what happens when Western leaders put Greta Thunberg in charge of energy policy: Countries substitute nuclear power — one of the cleanest, most reliable forms of energy — with renewable energy sources that are not yet ready for primetime, opening the door for thug dictators to take over sovereign countries. Expect oil prices, which already are surging to prices not seen in seven years, to get worse.

Biden to Blame
None of this is to excuse Putin’s flagrant violation of international law, or to place blame for what’s happening in Ukraine on Biden. But like Biden’s deadly and disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, the extent of this crisis was entirely avoidable.

The Biden administration chose to flush precious geopolitical leverage down the drain by making the United States and European allies once again dependent on hostile regimes instead of empowering our energy sector. It furthered policies that actively discouraged American oil production, then went to the Organization of the Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) begging for help.

After decades of being dragged into wars in the Middle East over these very resources, we should have known better. But alas, Biden was there making that happen, too.

What’s that saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

The Biden administration’s refusal to harness America’s own natural resources, while increasing our reliance on these same resources from adversarial nations, is a hypocrisy that’s too dangerous to ignore. Energy independence is not just a “climate issue.” First and foremost, it’s a national security issue, essential to preventing catastrophes like we see unfolding before us today.

Quote:Amid declining U.S. energy production, oil imports from Russia last year increased to their highest level in a decade, as the formerly communist country continues to be the world's largest net exporter of oil and gas combined.

Last year, Russia​n oil exports to the U.S.​ reached the highest level in a decade, peaking at over 26 million barrels in May, as Russia surpassed Mexico as the second-highest oil exporter to the U.S.

The U.S. has increased its imports of crude oil and petroleum products from Russia since 2018, EIA data shows.

U.S. dependence on Russian oil comes amid the decline of the American energy industry, as the Biden administration has canceled construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, banned new leases for oil and gas production on federal land, and planned on restricting methane waste emissions from natural gas drilling on public lands.

Critics blame President Biden's energy policies for indirectly facilitating the invasion of Ukraine by boosting Russia's energy export earnings.

"Biden energy policy is financing the Russian war machine!" Phill Kline, director of the Amistad Project and former Kansas attorney general, tweeted on Friday. "Russian exports in natural gas up $30B FY 2021 over FY 2020 while Energy Secretary Granholm holds up US exports of clean US liquefied natural gas in her fidelity to the AOC Squad."

"Between our push here in the U.S. to basically walk away from our energy independence, and Europe's push in the same way, we basically have funded this war in Ukraine," Job Creators Network President Alfredo Ortiz said in a conference call on Monday. "We've given the war chest to Putin by doing so."

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Treasury Department Christine McDaniel told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Monday that Russia's oil exports are five times its natural gas exports, so sanctions on their energy industry "could hurt a lot."

"[P]eople are probably scrambling to figure out, you know, how long could they go without energy imports from Russia," McDaniel said. "And I imagine, once those numbers and timelines start coming in, then people recalculate, you know, how much pain they're willing to undergo now to put a stop to this."

Russia is the second-largest producer of natural gas and third-largest in oil, although exports dropped significantly in 2020, according to British Petroleum. Natural gas exports decreased by 8.7% while oil exports dropped by 11%.

In 2020, Russia exported nearly five million barrels a day of crude oil and condensate, with 48% going to European countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 42% to Asia and Oceania, 9% to non-OECD Europe and Eurasia, and 1% to the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Quote:In aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one thing has become abundantly clear to the American people: energy security is national security. But after decades of indoctrination by environmental groups who have pushed a climate change agenda completely detached from reality, today America is left with neither.

Since the first day of his presidency, Joe Biden has capitulated to America’s most powerful, well-funded, dark money environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and Climate Action Network, whose agenda is to shut down fossil fuels and restructure our entire economy around a socialist-style Green New Deal.

Politically beholden to these groups, and fearing the shame and public harassment tactics that they are known for, President Biden began his presidency by unleashing a war on American oil and gas to satisfy the environmental left. Many people don’t know that for years, Russia has funded the anti-fracking propaganda that many environmental groups have picked up.

In 2017, congressional investigators found that a money trail linked Russia to millions of dollars funding U.S. nonprofits to work against U.S. shale gas in order to influence the U.S. energy market. Specifically, investigators found that NRDC, Sierra Club, and Climate Action Network were all found to have received millions of dollars of funding in grants from a shady San Francisco-based company called “Sea Change” that a money trail linked back to the Russians. Indeed, it is an open secret that Russians have funded anti-fracking and anti-natural gas propaganda in America for decades, as environmental groups funded the campaigns of Democrats and pressured them to ban fossil fuels.

These same environmental groups relentlessly attacked President Trump and his appointees (I was one) as “anti-science,” “enemies of the EPA,” and “climate change deniers,” pulling out all the stops to frame President Trump’s pro-American energy agenda as harmful to the environment. President Trump knew then what we are all seeing now: Energy independence is crucial to our security, and we don’t have to shut down industry with duplicative and costly regulations to protect our environment.

After spending millions to elect Biden, the environmental left got its wish: Biden canceled America’s Keystone XL pipeline, blocking the safe transport of oil from one of our closest allies and killing thousands of jobs. At the same time, Biden removed President Trump’s sanctions on the Russian NordStream2 pipeline, giving Putin the green light to move forward.

Biden canceled oil and gas leasing on 2.46 billion acres of federal on and off-shore lands, effectively crushing American energy supplies. He unleashed his federal regulators at the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, and more to hamper energy exploration, production, and transportation with new regulations. Finally, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent, Biden’s regulators at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission took one more step to embolden Russian oil by clamping down on pipeline permits and LNG-export terminals, which could have helped supply American gas to the rest of the world.

The result is that Russia got exactly what it wanted: Europe and America have become more dependent on Russian gas to supply our energy needs, depriving us of an incredibly important geopolitical tool of leverage in a time of crisis. Emboldened by Biden’s weak leadership and increased reliance on Russian gas, Putin made his move. So far, Biden has refused to hit Russia with sanctions on their oil and gas sector or remove barriers to American energy production.

Further adding to this madness is the fact that very few of Biden’s punitive moves against American energy would actually help the environment. Numerous studies have shown that pipelines have no material impact on greenhouse gas emissions since crude oil would still be extracted, and shipping it by rail or tanker instead of pipeline results in up to 42 percent higher emissions and more leaks.

Furthermore, American natural gas is far cleaner than Russian gas. A major 2019 study by the U.S. National Energy Technology Laboratory found that Russian gas piped to Europe has up to 22 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than European coal. U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG) delivered to the EU, in contrast, has up to 56 percent fewer total emissions than EU coal, the report shows.

Overall, natural gas production in the United States has fugitive emissions of 1.4 percent of total gas volume, according to an analysis from the Environmental Protection Agency done during the Obama administration. Amazingly, many of these groups also reject nuclear energy as a solution to climate change even though it has zero carbon emissions.

It is time for Biden and Democrats to wake up and stop their blind allegiance to environmental groups who attack American energy and have links to foreign countries. Energy policy should not be dictated by political groups, it should take into account all the factors and issues at play, of which climate change is one. National security and energy reliability are others.

America’s energy policy should embrace an all-of-the-above approach that includes nuclear, renewables, and gas. It is also time to recognize the significant gains U.S industry has made in fighting climate change. Since 2000, the United States has led the world in energy-related emissions reductions as natural gas from shale hydraulic fracturing has replaced coal power generation.

American energy can blunt the influence of Russian gas and reduce emissions. It’s time to stop the war on American oil and gas.