EDITORIAL: Biden goes begging for oil

OPINION:

Make no mistake: President Biden has gone to the Middle East to beg for oil. The first American president to actually try shutting down the nation’s economic lifeblood, Mr. Biden is now attempting to coax an infusion from Saudi friends he has condemned. Americans are counting the days until the White House door slams shut behind him for the final time.

To be sure, Mr. Biden has carried an assorted diplomatic slate with him to the region. In a Saturday Washington Post op-ed, the president writes he foresees a “new and more promising chapter of America’s engagement there.” Perfunctory meetings in Israel are planned with Yair Lapid, caretaker of Israel’s once-again-upended government, and with on-again, off-again Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as in the West Bank with unmovable Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

It is the final stop in Saudi Arabia, though, where the president’s oil objective resides. Hoping to avoid a hot glare from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom he has accused of complicity in the grisly death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Mr. Biden plans to meet with the oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council nations. There he is expected to issue a plaintiff cry for more oil in the name of global stability.

This, from the leader of the nation with the world’s largest recoverable oil reserves.

Far from his June promise that he is doing “everything possible to bring the price of energy down, gas prices down,” Mr. Biden has used a vast array of rhetorical and regulatory tools to dry up U.S. crude. At 11.6 million barrels a day, production is still 11.5% lower than its pre-pandemic peak, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

While ostensibly boosting domestic oil supplies by drawing down the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the president has diverted 5 million barrels to foreign buyers. Americans have learned that nearly a million barrels went to a Chinese firm in which Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, was once an investor. At 485.1 million barrels as of July 8, the U.S. reserve is at its lowest level since 1985.

Officialdom launches the usual blather that oil is a global commodity and by selling the resource abroad, the president is lowering U.S. gasoline prices. With gas still topping $4.60 a gallon nationwide — nearly double the day he took office — U.S. drivers can only shake their heads in disgust.

Fossil fuels power the modern world. Biden-style bumbling has driven up fuel costs, which are contributing mightily to the winding down of the U.S. economy. With 2022 first-quarter GDP falling by 1.6% and June’s Consumer Price Index coming in at an appalling 9.1%, the U.S. economy is on the cusp of a recession.

It’s unsurprising that the president’s approval scrapes along at 33%, according to a New York Times/ Siena College poll and, astonishingly, only 26% of Democrats want the party to renominate him in 2024.

As their president implores foreign potentates for oil, Americans are begging for an end to the Biden debacle.