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White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said it is ‘not accurate’ to say President Biden would rather Venezuela drill for oil than the U.S. and tossed blame to oil companies for not taking advantage of drilling leases.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday the Biden administration quietly granted a license to Chevron to resume oil production in Venezuela. The move eased sanctions imposed on the dictatorship in 2019 due to human rights violations.
‘Why is it that President Biden would rather let US companies drill for oil in Venezuela than here in the US?’ Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked Kirby during a news briefing Monday.
‘That’s not an accurate take on the president’s view,’ Kirby said.
‘The president has issued 9,000 permits for drilling on U.S. federal lands, Peter, 9000 of them being unused. There are plenty of opportunities for oil and gas companies to drill here in the United States,’ Kirby added.
‘The president has issued 9,000 permits for drilling on U.S. federal lands, Peter, 9000 of them being unused. There are plenty of opportunities for oil and gas companies to drill here in the United States,’ Kirby added
He downplayed the move’s effect on oil markets. ‘Our expectation is there won’t be a lot of oil coming out of there. And it will have to be shipped to the United States.’
‘This has nothing to do with a benefit to the climate,’ Kirby added when asked about the environmental impact of the move.
Lifting sanctions came after talks between socialist President Nicolás Maduro, and the opposition Unitary Platform resumed.
Maduro – who has been sharply criticized for human rights abuses – agreed to allow for a UN-managed humanitarian fund focused on education, health, food security and electricity programs. He also agreed to negotiate with the opposition to hold ‘free and fair’ elections in 2024.
Lifting sanctions came after talks between socialist President Nicolás Maduro, and the opposition Unitary Platform resumed
An oil pumpjack is seen in La Canada de Urdaneta, Venezuela
The White House insists the sanctions lift is not related to high fuel prices or the Russian war with Ukraine but is meant to ‘alleviate the suffering of the Venezuelan people and support the restoration of democracy,’ according to a Treasury Department statement.
‘Allowing Chevron to begin to lift oil from Venezuela is not something that is going to impact international oil prices. This is really about Venezuela and the Venezuelan process,’ a White House official said.
Chevron is the only remaining U.S. oil company in Venezuela. It is part of a joint venture with the state-run oil company there but has been barred by sanctions from operating there. No profits from the sale can go to the Venezuelan state-owned oil company PdVSA but must be used to pay debts to Venezuelan creditors in the U.S.
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Venezuela is home to the largest oil reserves in the world, slightly larger than Saudi Arabia’s though its thick tar-like crude is harder to extract. The once-prosperous OPEC nation’s hyper-inflationary collapse has led to more than three-quarters of the nation living below the poverty line.
A record number of Venezuelans are turning up at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Sanctions on Venezuela began 15 years ago and tightened severely under the Trump administration, which almost completely banned U.S. oil business in Venezuela.
In March, Biden officials held a meeting with Maduro officials to discuss easing sanctions on oil exports as gas prices surged in the U.S.
Biden’s attempt to appease both climate advocates and Americans concerned about high gas prices has led to a chaotic back-and-forth messaging on his energy policy.
‘No more drilling,’ Biden said one month ago, remarks which came only days after he demanded more drilling.
Biden, while stumping for Gov. Kathy Hochul in New York, responded to a question from the crowd about his promise to stop fracking and new drilling on federal lands and waters. ‘No more drilling…there is no more drilling…I haven’t formed any new drilling,’ he said.
The questioner pressed him by pointing out there had been new drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico during his administration. ‘That was before I was president. We’re trying to work on that to get that done,’ Biden said.
But the Biden administration routinely boasts that it has approved 9,000 new drilling permits in its first 22 months in office. Oil industry experts say Biden’s regulatory and legislative agenda prevents them from forking over the billions needed to rapidly add more refining capacity.
On Biden’s first day in office, he revoked a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have brought more Canadian crude to Gulf Coast refineries. Days later, he issued a moratorium on federal oil and gas leasing, which was later overturned in court.
Then in October, Biden blamed oil companies for ‘war-time profiteering’ and threatened them with a new windfall tax if they did not increase their pace of drilling new wells. The attack came by surprise only days after Energy Sec. Jennifer Granholm had met with executives and promised to work with them to find ways to increase diesel output.
The sanctions relief comes after the Biden administration agreed to pay $1 billion in ‘climate reparations’ to poor countries impacted by the use of fossil fuels.
The U.S. now appears to turn back to a corrupt dictatorship after shunning a U.S. ally looking to pump more oil due to climate concerns.
In the spring, the Biden administration vetoed a $180 million Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) loan to increase energy production in oil-rich developing nation Guyana, an increasingly rare U.S. ally in South America.
Its reason was 2021 Treasury ‘guidance on fossil fuel energy at the multilateral development banks,’ which says that the U.S. will ‘promote ending international financing of carbon-intensive fossil fuel-based energy.’
