How Biden Says No to Western Oil Producers, Yes to Venezuela

I think they were hoping you’d still be stuffed from your Thanksgiving turkey, or too busy being bored watching the World Cup to notice. Over the weekend, the Biden Administration announced plans to green light Venezuelan oil. This, as the Biden Administration continues to undermine American energy producers.

Furthermore, as Mary Anastasia O’Grady points out, this the same administration that green lighted oil development for a socialist dictator nation like Venezuela, while turning down our friends from the nearby Guyana. Sticking it to our friends at home and abroad while pumping money into the pockets of dictators.

We spoke with Kathleen Sgamma, the President of the Western Energy Alliance, on Monday’s “Montana Talks statewide radio show with Aaron Flint.”

Sgamma: Well, there’s no question that it’s better to produce it here than to import it from potentially unfriendly countries. A better option would have been the Keystone XL Pipeline, because it brings in that heavy crude from Canada…What we have a situation within the United States is- we have refineries that have been around since the 70s, and they are built to process heavier crude. A lot of the new production we’ve got in North Dakota and Montana and Colorado and New Mexico is light, sweet crude. And so our refining capacity is not such that we can refine all the light, sweet crude that we produce here. So we actually have to import in some heavy crude…It’s impossible to build a new refinery or expand capacity. And, in fact, capacity has shrunk in the United States for refiners. So we are kind of stuck with a fuel mix from the 1970s, so to speak. So that’s why we do need heavier crude from other countries.

We also talked about the billions of dollars in conservation funding that comes from domestic oil and gas drilling and the Great American Outdoors Act.

Sgamma: That takes up to $1.9 billion annually from energy revenues from onshore development, and takes 50% of that and gives it up to $1.9 billion into reducing the backlog of infrastructure projects on national parks and wildlife refuges and other public lands. So that comes from onshore development. About 93% of that comes from oil and natural gas, a little bit from coal…Then the Land and Water Conservation Fund was also fully funded, in perpetuity, to the tune of  $900 million a year,and that comes exclusively from offshore oil and gas revenues. So between the two of them, $2.8 billion goes into conservation projects and infrastructure projects and national parks and other public lands.

So there you have it. Instead of supporting oil and gas producers in Montana, North Dakota, and elsewhere- Biden is supporting Venezuela. And instead of that oil and gas revenue going towards infrastructure for our national parks, it is going into the pockets of dictators.

Full audio of our chat with Kathleen Sgamma: