Earlier today President Biden briefed the nation from the White House, where he warned oil companies to lower their prices or face consequences.
During the speech he used the term “time of war” to justify the reasoning for why he is taking this action now and claimed that “during a time of war” it is the responsibility of companies “to act beyond their narrow self interest.” That is very important language that many are going to overlook. What the President did today is signal that he is moving towards nationalizing the industry and is going to use the war between Russia and Ukraine as justification for it.
One of the final nails in the coffin for Venezuela was the government nationalizing the oil industry. Biden took a major step towards that. And he is likely to go much further over the coming months.
The President also claimed that it is the oil companies responsibility to invest and drill more to bring prices down. The only issue is is that he is the one doing whatever he can to prevent that, including suspending new oil drilling on federal lands and then when the courts overturned that started to allow drilling again but in a much smaller area and at a much higher fee, and pushing for ESG, which is going to make it impossible to expand fossil fuel production because that is the very purpose of ESG.
What Biden is now doing is blaming the oil companies for the problem that he created and that he is continuing to cause.
The President did mention a windfall tax for oil companies with high profits, as well as other consequences but didn’t go into detail on what those may be.
What is coming should terrify everyone and sadly most aren’t going to pay attention to what Biden claimed today. It may sound good that the President is stepping in to lower oil prices to the average person who isn’t paying attention and doesn’t know history is going to cheer for it. But the reality is is that this could collapse the country and there may not be anything left when we get to 2024.