Biden administration policies have made it much harder for the U.S. to tackle the Ukrainian crisis.
Former Trump national-security adviser H. R. McMaster says that the goal of the U.S. must always be to align our national-security policy with our energy policy. He told NPR he finds it inexplicable “why the Biden administration canceled a Canadian pipeline and greenlighted the Russian pipeline Nord Stream 2.”
On every front, Biden has made it harder for the U.S. to remain energy independent and thus able to send LNG and crude-oil exports to our European allies to make up for crippling losses in Russian exports.
Just last week, Biden appointees at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission erected regulatory barriers that essentially make it impossible for the U.S. to ever build another LNG export terminal. Democratic senator Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) called the move “reckless.”
The Russians, meanwhile, are celebrating the fact that Germany has shut down its nuclear reactors and is now dependent on Russia for 50 percent of its natural gas and 41 percent of its oil. Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president who is now the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, scoffed at Germany’s belated decision to delay certification of the unopened Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline.
“Welcome to the brave new world where Europeans are very soon going to pay 2.000 euros ($2,140) for 1,000 cubic meters of natural gas!” Medvedev chortled on his Twitter account.
Russian officials must be agog at how much Biden policies have undercut U.S. energy independence.
“We have never seen such a huge gap between the foreign-policy needs of the United States in energy and the complete refusal of U.S. policy makers to resist the special interest demands of environmental groups opposing energy development,” James Lucier, an energy analyst with Capital Alpha Partners in Washington, told National Review.