AS I SEE IT
By Neal A. Shipman
Farmer Editor
While President Joe Biden and his administration are proclaiming that taming inflation is now their highest domestic policy, one has to wonder why it took so long for them to realize that everything that they began enacting on his first day in office laid the groundwork for the pain that American consumers are now feeling.
On Day 1, Biden promised to eradicate America’s oil and gas industry and push the country toward energy coming from renewable resources, such as wind and solar. And he delivered on that promise by cancelling the Keystone Pipeline project that not only would have brought Canadian oil into the United States, but also would have served to deliver North Dakota crude oil to refineries. His administration also made it clear to the oil companies that the government would be making the process of their leasing of federal minerals much more difficult and that the construction of future pipelines would be limited.
The result? Every American is now paying record prices at the gas pump. And that means that the cost of everything that America consumes is costing more because of increased transportation costs. While the administration is blaming Russia, OPEC, the oil companies and everyone else for the rise in prices, the reality is that oil prices are set on a world market. When a product, such as oil and natural gas, becomes more scarce, as competition from other buyers increases, the price increases.