I wrote yesterday about the Steve Bannon plot to activate young environmentalists against Biden over the huge increase in American oil production during his administration (even as they lie to the MAGA cultists, telling them that Biden has shut off the spigot and Trump will come in an drill, baby, drill.) They figure they can get the young vote to turn on the Democrats and vote 3rd Party, whether it’s RFK or Jill Stein.
Biden just put a monkey wrench in that plan:
The US set aside 23 million acres of Alaska’s North Slope to serve as an emergency oil supply a century ago. Now, President Joe Biden is moving to block oil and gas development across roughly half of it.
The initiative, set to be finalized within days, marks one of the most sweeping efforts yet by Biden to limit oil and gas exploration on federal lands. It comes as he seeks to boost land conservation and fight climate change — and is campaigning for a second term on promises to do more of it.
The changes wouldn’t affect ConocoPhillips’s controversial 600-million-barrel Willow oil project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. But oil industry leaders say the plan is more expansive than initially anticipated and threatens to make it nearly impossible to build another megaproject in the region.
That’s spooking oil companies with holdings in the National Petroleum Reserve, which — along with the rest of Alaska’s North Slope — was viewed as a major growth engine for the industry before the shale boom. Interest has surged again in recent years, fed by mammoth discoveries. Tapping the region’s reservoirs could yield decades of production.
There is no reason to tap that reserve. If an emergency comes up down the road then it will be there. But that land should be protected and we should do everything we can to make sure it is.
I don’t know if Biden will get anything but grief for this but he should be given credit. Instead, I’m sure the headlines will all be that it’s more bad news for him because well .. what isn’t?