If we have a choice between clean, regulated energy that gives American gas workers good pay and benefits, or dirty oil mined by the underpaid slaves of dictators and shipped on rusty boats over the ocean, Joe Biden is always gonna choose the latter!
The Biden administration has canceled one of the most high-profile oil and gas lease opportunities pending before the Interior Department. The decision, which halts the potential to drill for oil in over 1 million acres in the Cook Inlet in Alaska, comes at a challenging political moment, when gas prices are hitting painful new highs.
In a statement shared first with CBS News, the Department of the Interior cited a "lack of industry interest in leasing in the area" for the decision to "not move forward" with the Cook Inlet lease sale. The department also halted two leases under consideration for the Gulf of Mexico region because of "conflicting court rulings that impacted work on these proposed lease sales.
The offshore drilling program is also set to expire next month. The Daily Wire notes this will halt all new leases for offshore drilling until at least next year.
Because the federal government can take months to create a new offshore drilling plan, energy companies will likely have to wait until at least 2023 before they can gain access to new leases.
It sure is great that we just hit record high gas prices this week!
Biden has already emptied the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to artificially lower prices, a pathetic change from our complete energy reliance just a year ago.
What he going to do now?
Meanwhile, energy industry leaders have some thoughts about the president.
Frank Macchairola, a top official with the American Petroleum Institute, the country's largest oil and gas trade association, called the cancellation of the Cook Inlet lease "another example of the administration's lack of commitment to oil and gas development in the US."
"The President has spoken about the need for additional supplies in the market, but his administration has failed to take action to match that rhetoric," Macchairola said, adding that politically it would play "not well."
"In the kind of price environment that we're seeing, there are negative consequences to shutting off oil and gas development, both politically and practically," he said.
This isn't the first lease Biden has canceled. We've covered multiple pipelines he's shut down, including the Keystone XL Pipeline on Day 1 of his presidency.
The prediction I made back in November has (sadly for all of us) come true:
You could say that draining your bank account has been a top priority of Biden's administration!
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