AS I SEE IT
By Neal A. Shipman
Farmer Editor
While American consumers are struggling to find anything on store shelves due to a breakdown in the nation’s supply chain, they are also facing the highest gasoline and energy costs in the past decade.
So why are fuel prices skyrocketing?
The answer is pretty simple. When Donald Trump was president of the United States, he put making America energy independence a high priority. He used his office to expand this nation’s oil and natural gas production. And it worked. For the first time in years, not only was America producing enough oil to meet its needs, but this country was able to export its oil to its foreign friends and allies.
But all of that changed when President Joe Biden took office. Suddenly, oil production and everything associated with the use of fossil fuels became taboo. In the first days of him assuming office, he killed the Keystone Pipeline that would have brought Canadian oil into the United States for refining, as well as serve as a major pipeline that would take North Dakota oil to market. And he set in place regulations that prohibited the leasing of federal minerals that further restricted oil production in the United States.