Now, the Biden Administration is admitting the obvious: their cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline was a massive mistake.
Imagine what would have happened had the project not been delayed by Barack Obama in 2015? With the United States’ large expansion of oil drilling due to fracking and the demand for oil and natural gas overseas, Obama’s error was critical.
This error is on full display every time you go to the gas station– but it’s much deeper than that. The loss of the ability to utilize American and Canadian oil directly aided our nation’s adversaries. The United States lost while Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran won.
By cutting out pipelines, much of that oil either wasn’t drilled at all or placed on rail cars, which is far less safe than pipelines. Much of our current gasoline crisis can be traced back to Obama and Biden’s bans.
The mistake was one that President Trump recognized. Donald Trump reversed the Obama ban when he entered office in 2017.
Now that oil price shocks have spurred inflation, the Biden Administration understands that it cannot hide the plain truth anymore: it made a massive mistake. The admission is cold comfort to the tens of thousands of oil workers who were put out of a job.
The cancelation of the Keystone XL pipeline has already cost the United States thousands of jobs and billions in economic growth while families suffer under the weight of record high energy prices.
https://t.co/GZdwTEKGXv— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) January 20, 2023
Joe Biden and his team could fix this error, though it would take time to fully recover from the error. Obama and Biden’s bans placed the pipeline nearly a decade behind. That’s a long time to try to make up quickly.
However, it is highly unlikely that the Biden Administration will fully change on the issue of oil and natural gas. At a time of high prices and when many countries need American fossil fuels, we are cutting off our nose to spite our face.
Rampant inflation and many Americans drowning in debt are what matter now. A pro-American energy plan is exactly what the country needs right now.
