Russia inflames political war over gas prices, oil drilling
- Monica philo
- Mar 4, 2022
- 2 min read
GOP lawmakers are using rising gasoline prices and Russia's invasion of Ukraine to attack President Biden’s energy policies, arguing that the administration has failed to improve U.S. energy independence. Experts say many of their claims are misleading, noting that administration actions have had little impact at the pump and don’t have much bearing on the conflict abroad.
Nevertheless, the Republicans’ rhetoric is a likely preview of their midterm argument: that electing Republicans will lead to better U.S. energy policies and lower prices. In recent days, Republicans have gone on the attack — flaming Biden over his decision to nix the Keystone XL pipeline and pause or delay oil and gas leasing.
Those joining in on the criticism include House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and James Lankford (R-Okla.), who have particularly discussed Biden’s move to nix a border crossing permit for the pipeline.
But, when Biden revoked the permit, the pipeline was only about 8 percent complete, and the company behind it said in 2020 that it didn’t expect the vessel to deliver energy until 2023. And experts note that the global nature of energy markets raise serious questions about the merits of the critique.
“There is little evidence to back up the argument that Keystone XL would have averted some of this price spike. The Keystone pipeline capacity is less than one-tenth of Russian oil exports,” James Glynn, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told The Hill in an email.
“Even if Keystone XL was filled with fully additional Canadian export capacity, which would have been an unlikely scenario, it would not balance the global oil markets where the price of oil is set through a global arbitrage of the last marginal available barrel,” Glynn added.
Canada is the largest U.S. source of foreign oil.
Republicans have more broadly tried to paint Biden’s climate goals as anti-energy, with the point even coming up during their response to his State of the Union address.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) accused Biden of “waiving sanctions on Russian pipelines while limiting oil production here at home,” a reference to the administration’s May waiver of sanctions for the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline.
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