Category: Fossile Fuels

Biden’s Impeachable ‘Foreign Oil’ Policy

One long string of ‘quid-pro-quos’ that have led to international wars and terrorism.

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SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/bidens-impeachable-foreign-oil-policy/; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes;

[Order Daniel Greenfield’s new book, Domestic Enemies: HERE.]

Five years after Trump was impeached over accusations that he pressured Ukraine for political reasons, Biden is pressuring Ukraine for political reasons with no impeachment in sight.

Recent reports in the UK’s Telegraph and Financial Times suggest that Biden is demanding that Ukraine stop attacking Russia’s energy infrastructure because he’s afraid of the impact of high energy prices on the presidential election.

“Mr Biden reportedly raised concerns with Kyiv that the bid to damage Russia’s oil production capacity could have repercussions for his re-election campaign,” The Telegraph reported.

“Nothing terrifies a sitting American president more than a surge in pump prices during an election year,” The Financial Times quoted a former White House energy adviser as saying.

Similar reports have started to appear in other European media outlets, including Politico.

Whatever one thinks of the Russia-Ukraine War, Joe Biden’s re-election prospects are an illegitimate and impeachable reason to be conducting a war or any foreign policy.

And this is not a unique event.

Many suspect that Biden’s turn against Israel was driven by a threat to his election prospects from Hamas supporting voters in Dearborn, Michigan, as well as radical leftists in his party.

And this is part of a pattern that has weakened America.

Biden emptied the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) ahead of the midterms to buy support for his party in the middle of the Russia-Ukraine war and ahead of what would become the Hamas war. Those actions left America vulnerable and potentially changed the course of both wars.

The decision to empty the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was not done for national reasons, but personal political ones, and while politicians routinely bribe voters with public money, this particular bribe could end up losing several wars while sending America into an energy crisis.

Biden’s obsession with the impact of oil prices on his time in office led him to provide sanctions relief to Iran even while suppressing domestic energy production. By propping up energy production in enemy nations like Iran and Russia, Biden was able to give his leftist environmentalist base what it wanted, crushing domestic energy production, while ensuring what he thought would be a cheap supply abroad that he could always rely on for elections.

But the Saudis responded to Biden’s sellout on Iran by goosing energy prices, and Russia and Iran took the influx of cash and used it to launch their own wars with disastrous results.

Biden’s support for Ukraine was premised on protecting the flow of Russian oil and gas. Russians and Ukrainians could die in large numbers on both sides, but energy prices couldn’t spiral too far out of control because that might actually affect Biden’s reelection campaign. But as Ukraine struggled on the battlefield, Russia’s energy infrastructure became an easy and obvious target, and Biden’s obvious political agenda became more easily apparent.

Now the European press is talking about it even if it’s still too explosive for the American media.

Democrats widely support both the Ukraine war and ending oil production, which when taken together leads to high energy prices. Unable to find a way to combine low domestic production, low energy prices and the Russia-Ukraine war, Biden turned to an easier target: Israel.

Unlike Ukraine, Israel is less popular with Biden’s base. The Biden administration may be hoping that forcing an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas will also convince Iran to step down from its regional attacks, including by the Houthis in Yemen, and simplify the process of talking the Iranians and even the Saudis into a nuclear deal that would lower energy prices.

Biden has already been negotiating to trade the Saudis' nuclear capability for cheap oil.

The Wall Street Journal reported last year that “Saudi Arabia has told the White House it would be willing to boost oil production early next year if crude prices are high”.

This was not just a Saudi proposal, but an explicit request from the Biden administration.

“Two top White House officials, Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein, flew late last month to Saudi Arabia, where they emphasized that soaring petroleum prices would make it harder to win support in Washington, the officials said,” the Journal reported.

Biden had previously demanded that the Saudis postpone a production cut ahead of the midterms. The Wall Street Journal had reported that, “the one-month delay requested by Washington would have meant a production cut made in the days before the election, too late to have much effect on consumers’ wallets ahead of the vote.”

And Biden had even tried to bribe the Saudis with a fortune in taxpayer money, promising to “buy oil on the market to replenish Washington’s strategic stockpiles if the price of Brent, the main international benchmark, fell to $75 a barrel”.

“There’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done,” Biden had threatened Saudi Arabia on CNN for failing to go along with his demand for election day oil price rigging.

Biden’s foreign policy of bribing enemies is unnecessary because he has a simple and straightforward way to lower oil prices: restart domestic production.

Instead, Biden broke the law and illegally tried to block domestic energy production. When that failed, his administration deliberately sabotaged oil and gas lease auctions. After putting a former eco-terrorist in charge of the Bureau of Land Management, he tried to restrict offshore drilling to only three sites, and his administration was then sued by the energy industry for using “every tool at its disposal” to stop drilling.

How do we square Biden’s militant campaign against domestic drilling with his obsession with low energy prices abroad? There’s no environmental argument for such an incoherent policy.

Biden isn’t acting out of any consistent set of political principles, but personal election needs.

“I can guarantee you that if I am president, there will be no offshore drilling,” Biden promised during his presidential campaign. His leftist backers demand an end to domestic energy production.

And yet he also knows that if energy prices are high, American voters will turn on him.

Biden sold out the American energy industry to win over environmentalists and then sold out our national security to get cheap oil. Rather than just a single ‘quid-pro-quo’, Biden’s foreign policy has been one long string of quid-pro-quos that have led to international wars and terrorism.

Once Biden has given away our best leverage in the energy market and domestic production, Iran, Russia, the Saudis and other players used that to their advantage to create the crisis we’re in.

This mess is not simply the result of “misguided idealism”, “incompetence” “naivete” or any of the other excuses used to downwardly define this foreign policy deviancy, but the personal political calculations of a corrupt and greedy president who wanted to lie to everyone.

Biden thought that he could trick, appease and use everyone all at the same time. That he could have his energy cake and eat it too. Instead, Americans are stuck with high energy prices, low reserves and two wars that are not likely to end any time soon. All of this happened because the man who wanted to be president lacked the courage to tell his party that they couldn’t have it all.

Biden's presidential campaign was a contradictory mess. It promised Democrats that they would have a version of Obama that would appeal to older white moderate Democrats. It claimed that two incompatible versions of the party could be fused together uniting traditional Democrats and leftist socialists in one man who would combine the best of FDR and JFK.

Biden’s hypocritical corrupt energy policy shows how he tried to make that work and the price that America and the world are paying for it.

Feds charge two Iranian nationals in elaborate oil scheme to fund jihad terror

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SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2024/02/feds-charge-two-iranian-nationals-in-elaborate-oil-scheme-to-fund-jihad-terror; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

The failure of the mainstream media to report adequately about this elaborate multi-million-dollar scheme “to fund Islamic terrorism through the violation of U.S. sanctions and the trafficking of Iranian oil” is another demonstration of how regularly the most important news stories are being ignored and concealed. As the article below points out, “no U.S. agency or news outlet has released any photographs of the alleged terrorists.” Why protect them?

The promotion of woke indoctrination has become the focus of primetime news features, while stories involving national security and the defense of Western traditions and freedoms are largely underreported, inadequately reported or relegated to a minor file. The article below points out that Iranian oil is a major funding source for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This in itself demonstrates that this story should be headline news, with photos of the two people who have been charged. Reuters did manage to report that the charges were “linked to a billion-dollar oil trafficking network that it says finances Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other militant groups.”

Add in the entire network of terrorism funding streams via Muslim Brotherhood-connected sources, and one can see that America and other globalist Western countries have become lucrative bases of activity for powerful terror networks. This, combined with open borders, is quickly leading to the demise of the West. Yet none of this gets discussed in mainstream news outlets.

“U.S. Charges Two Foreign Nationals for Trafficking Iranian Oil to Fund Islamic Terrorism,” by Amy Mek, RAIR Foundation, February 25, 2024:

Curiously, despite the high-profile nature of this case and the serious charges levied against Shaoyun Wang and Mahmood Rashid Amur Al Habsi, it appears no U.S. agency or news outlet has released any photographs of the alleged terrorists.

In a striking demonstration of the ongoing challenges facing the United States in keeping terrorists at bay, a joint operation by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Washington, D.C., and the FBI Minneapolis has led to the indictment of two foreign nationals for their roles in a sophisticated scheme to fund Islamic terrorism through the violation of U.S. sanctions and the trafficking of Iranian oil. The operation reveals not only the intricate methods employed by individuals to operate within American borders but also underscores the persistent threat and the nation’s ongoing battle against the financing of global terrorism.

On February 2, Shaoyun Wang, 54, of China, and Mahmood Rashid Amur Al Habsi, 39, of Oman, were charged under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations, in addition to facing charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering. The duo is accused of facilitating the export of over $100 million worth of Iranian oil to Chinese government-owned refineries, with the profits intended to support the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), a designated terrorist organization.

This case forms part of a broader effort by the Justice Department to dismantle the illicit financial networks that fuel Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its malign activities, as announced in a recent comprehensive enforcement action. The unsealing of three federal cases across two U.S. Attorneys’ Offices marks a significant stride in combating the trafficking of Iranian oil, which serves as a major funding source for the IRGC, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), and its Qods Force, Iran’s primary vehicle for supporting terrorist organizations abroad.

The enforcement actions have led to the seizure of more than $108 million and over 500,000 barrels of sanctioned fuel, significantly undercutting the financial backbone of Iran’s IRGC and its external operations wing, the IRGC-QF. This concerted effort demonstrates the U.S. government’s commitment to using every tool at its disposal to disrupt Iran’s unlawful revenue streams, highlighting the seizure as a pivotal step in curtailing the regime’s ability to finance its destabilizing activities that threaten U.S. national security and global peace……

Iran’s navy seizes oil tanker that once was at center of major crisis between the Islamic Republic and Washington

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SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2024/01/irans-navy-seizes-oil-tanker-that-once-was-at-center-of-major-crisis-between-the-islamic-republic-and-washington; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

The mullahs know the Biden regime is weak and so treasonous and appeasement-minded that it just sent them $10 billion. So they know that the U.S. will do nothing.

“‘Unauthorized’ men in military garb take over contentious oil tanker in Gulf of Oman — one day after Houthi rebels strike in full-scale drone, missile attack,” Associated Press, January 11, 2024:

Iran’s navy seized an oil tanker on Thursday in the Gulf of Oman that once was at the center of a major crisis between Tehran and Washington, officials said, a seizure that further escalates tensions in the Mideast waterways.

The vessel was once known as the Suez Rajan and was involved in a yearlong dispute that ultimately saw the U.S. Justice Department seize 1 million barrels of Iranian crude oil on it.

The seizure also comes after weeks of attacks by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels on shipping in the Red Sea, including their largest barrage ever of drones and missiles launched late Tuesday.

That has raised the risk of possible retaliatory strikes by U.S.-led forces now patrolling the vital waterway, especially after a United Nations Security Council vote on Wednesday condemning the Houthis and as American and British officials warned of potential consequences over the attacks.

Iran’s state-run television acknowledged the seizure late Thursday afternoon, hours after armed men boarded it.

The oil tanker was boarded in the Gulf of Oman by “unauthorized” people in military uniforms early on Thursday morning.

“The violating oil tanker Suez Rajan … stole Iranian oil by leading it to the Americans and delivered it to the Americans,” state TV said.

It said Iran’s navy, rather than its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, conducted the seizure….

GOP slams Biden administration’s proposal for home water heaters amid CO2 emission fears

 

First, They Came for Your Gas Stove. Now They're Coming for Your Hot Water Heater.

SEE ALSO: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/07/23/first-they-came-for-your-gas-stove-now-theyre-coming-for-your-hot-water-heater-n1712949

BY BROOKE MALLORY

SEE: https://www.oann.com/newsroom/gop-slams-biden-administrations-proposal-for-home-water-heaters-amid-co2-emission-fears/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre (L) looks on as US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm (R) speaks during a daily press briefing. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

OAN’s Brooke Mallory
11:33 AM – Sunday, July 23, 2023  

If a new Department of Energy plan that has been heavily opposed by Republican senators becomes law, water heaters might soon be subject to considerably stricter efficiency criteria.

The Biden administration is currently pushing towards requiring the majority of electric water heaters to adopt heat pump technology and gas-fired water heaters to utilize condensing technology in a draft regulation.

The proposal was released by the Department of Energy (DOE) on Friday.

It comes months after the Biden administration sparked a tempest over feared stovetop rules, with Albany, New York, lawmakers passing a contentious first-in-the-nation gas stove ban.

“Today’s actions, together with our industry partners and stakeholders, improve outdated efficiency standards for common household appliances, which is essential to slashing utility bills for American families and cutting harmful carbon emissions,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.

The Biden administration reportedly claims that the regulation “plan,” which is slated to take effect in 2029, would save Americans $198 billion and reduce CO2 emissions by 501 million metric tons over the following 30 years. However, these proposed numbers and estimates have been disputed by many analysts from GOP think tanks.

Minimum efficiency criteria for oil-fired storage water heaters, gas-fired water heaters, and gas-fired instantaneous water heaters will be heavily raised by the department.

“This proposal reinforces the trajectory of consumer savings that forms the key pillar of Bidenomics and builds on the unprecedented actions already taken by this Administration to lower energy costs for working families across the nation,” Granholm continued.

According to the agency, water heating accounts for 23% of consumer utility expenses and yearly residential energy usage.

Congress compels the agency to develop efficiency criteria, and it claims to have last modified its water heater policy in 2010.

Thomas Massie, a Republican U.S. representative for Kentucky’s 4th congressional district since 2012, shared his thoughts on the new water-heating proposal on Twitter.

 “Leave us alone. These products already exist in the free market. Consumers should decide whether the upfront cost of a heat-pump water heater is worth the possible long term savings. In many cases, the monthly savings never make up for the upfront cost of the equipment,” Massie said.

“From the people who want showers and faucets without enough water pressure, dishwashers that don’t fully clean, washers and dryers that fully wash or dry, etc., they now want water heaters that don’t fully and quickly heat. All in the name of ‘environmentalism’ or ‘climate change,’” said a separate social media user.

These new regulations would apply to new water heaters that enter the market in 2029.

The departments emphasized that President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act includes “tax credits, rebates, and other incentives” to help people save money on more efficient water heaters.

The new suggestion has already sparked debate among many notable online users.

“First they came for your gas stoves. Then they came for your dishwashers. Next, they came for your water heaters and air conditioners. Now the Biden apparatchiks are coming for your portable gas generators,” Forbes contributor David Blackmon asserted.

In recent months, the government has also taken steps to tighten requirements for a variety of domestic equipment, including air conditioners, washing machines, refrigerators, and others. A member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission sparked outrage earlier this year when he suggested that a widespread ban on gas stoves may be on the table.

The House voted last month to prevent the federal government from doing so in the future, and the Senate has not yet voted on that bill.

The Biden administration boasted in December of last year that it had taken 110 steps to boost efficiency regulations in 2022 to help its “climate change goals.”

Stay informed! Receive breaking news blasts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts

 

Not a Conspiracy Theory: Yes, the Government Will Be Coming for Your Gas Stove

Not a Conspiracy Theory: Yes, the Government Will Be Coming for Your Gas Stove

BY RICK MORAN

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/05/04/not-a-conspiracy-theory-yes-the-government-will-be-coming-for-your-gas-stove-n1692571;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Last January, when Consumer Product Safety Commission member Richard Trumka Jr. suggested that the entire U.S. could follow the lead of Berkeley, Calif., and ban the use of gas stoves, conservatives lit into the CPSC and Trumka for even suggesting such a thing.

New York Senator Chuck Schumer called suggestions that the government wanted to end the use of gas stoves in residences a “MAGA conspiracy theory.” “Nobody is taking away your gas stove,” he said.

That may be true. But if you like cooking with gas or heating your house with gas, don’t try to relocate. The chances are good that if you want to move to a blue state in the next couple of years, you’re going to be forced to cook with electricity. That’s because it will soon be all the rage in blue states to ban the installation of gas stoves in all new construction.

The movement to rid the planet of gas stoves got a big boost on Wednesday when the New York legislature passed a bill that would ban gas stoves in new residences starting in 2026.

Why? Gas stoves are powered by natural gas — a fossil fuel. There have also been a couple of studies showing that cooking with gas can give your child asthma. Or something.

Reason.com:

Steve Everley, writing in National Review in January, covered several flaws in the most recent studies finding serious health impacts from gas stoves. Experimental studies that found links between gas stoves and child asthma used airtight rooms without ventilation. The author of another much-touted meta-analysis finding a link between gas stoves and child asthma said their study “does not assume or estimate a causal relationship.” Masses of earlier studies, Everley notes, have found no health impacts from gas stoves.

In the short-term, mandated electrification of appliances is probably worse for the climate. On-site use of gas stoves and furnaces uses almost all the energy in the gas. Generating electricity from gas and then using that electricity to power appliances is much less efficient. Of New York’s 10 largest power plants, for instance, five are powered by natural gas.

Cherry-picking scientific studies to “prove” something is dangerous is dishonest and anti-science. But eco-fads like banning gas stoves wouldn’t be possible without climate hysterics driving the conversation and the media lapping it up like good little puppies.

Does it matter that people actually like their gas stoves?

“Most home chefs—and pretty much all professional chefs—will tell you that electric stoves take a long time to heat up and are far less responsive when changing heat levels. Induction stoves, which are actually quite fast to heat up, require different types of cookware and kitchen thermometers, in addition to being a lot more expensive than electric stoves,” wrote Reason‘s Liz Wolfe earlier this year.

This is a consequence of demonizing fossil fuels. The “devil’s breath” is not a hazard, nor does it contribute measurably to net carbon emissions. In fact, it wasn’t so long ago that greens were demanding the coal-fired plants be repurposed to burn natural gas.

As soon as I buy my “Mr. Fusion,” I’ll give up my gas stove.