Biden Abandoned Pledge To Punish OPEC. It Just Slashed Oil Production Again.

Oil prices surged on Monday as the Saudi-led Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announced that it would reduce oil production, marking the second time they have done so in the last six months. This comes after President Joe Biden abandoned his pledge to punish OPEC for past production cuts.

The prices of crude oil rose by as much as 8% early on Monday morning, the largest single-day jump in over a year according to Bloomberg. Just hours before the price jump, OPEC announced that they would reduce output by over a million barrels per day.

OPEC made a similar production cut announcement of two million barrels per day in October 2020 which led to Biden’s threat of “consequences” against Saudi Arabia. However, Biden’s administration never acted on that threat and even praised Saudi Arabia for advancing U.S. interests by cutting production. In response to this most recent production cut, Biden’s National Security Council criticized the decision but did not indicate any plan of action.

The founder of energy group Power the Future, Daniel Turner, criticized Biden’s response stating that it is inadequate. Turner went on to urge Biden to put politics aside and to support American energy, otherwise, the U.S. may return to the norm of $4 per gallon gasoline and other unpleasant factors.

Biden, during his 2020 campaign, strongly opposed U.S. oil and gas production and vowed to end fossil fuel usage. After taking office, he cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline and enforced a moratorium on new gas leases which led to record-high gas prices. In June 2022, the average price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. reached $5 for the first time ever. Following this spike, Biden urged the oil industry to increase domestic production to keep prices down, but officials in his administration pressured oil companies to do the opposite citing the need to combat climate change.

Biden’s climate czar John Kerry criticized Chevron and BP for their plans to increase oil production stating that it goes against global climate initiatives and called on these companies to recognize the current situation of climate change.