Joe Biden has made repeated efforts, along with his various spokespeople, to “explain” how well his energy strategy has been working over the past two years. One of the bigger moves that he made was to begin selling off hundreds of millions of barrels of oil from our nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. He has also tried to point the finger of blame at the oil companies for “not producing enough,” even as he went to countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela with his hat in his hand, trying to buy more oil. He’s done pretty much everything except promote and expand domestic oil and gas drilling. In the background, we learned that Biden has been in talks to refill the SPR somehow. He’s suggested various approaches, but none of them seemed to make much sense.

You just knew that eventually, the oil and gas industry was going to have to weigh in on the situation, particularly if they were being made out to be the bad guys by the White House. This week, analysts from the Institute for Energy Research (IER) did just that. And their assessment of the situation doesn’t reflect well on Joe Biden’s handling of the matter. They are well aware of just how much oil and gas we could be producing and how dangerously low the SPR has been allowed to fall. So why do they believe these production issues have been handled in this fashion? They don’t exactly say it in so many words, but you don’t have to read between the lines very far to figure out that all of this was done for political motivations and it hasn’t worked out well.

While prior administrations have had SPR releases, they have been used to avert short-run price increases due to emergency circumstances, such as the price run-ups during the Persian Gulf War and immediately after Hurricane Katrina. Prior administrations viewed the domestic production of fossil fuels as a positive and necessary objective, compared to Biden’s climate policies that seek to end the use of fossil fuels. Even President Obama boasted about the benefit of U.S. energy production.

Biden’s policies, however, conflict with the administration’s desperate attempts to avoid sharp increases in gasoline prices. At least, that appears to be the case prior to the midterm elections. Biden has imposed constraints on domestic oil production while begging Saudi Arabia for increases in output. Since the latter did not work, Biden released oil from the SPR several times to avoid the political jam that his anti–oil-and-gas policies created, leaving the reserve’s inventory at a 40-year low. U.S. commercial oil in storage is now higher than oil stocks in SPR. While he is manipulating domestic gas and diesel prices by using the SPR, Biden wants to sue OPEC members for “price manipulation.”  This is after he restricted supplies by offering the fewest federal acres for oil and gas leasing since WWII.

This is a lengthy analysis developed by the people who know the oil and gas industry best and the entire thing is worth your time to read. But just browsing the excerpt above, you can see that IER has pinpointed just where the White House’s attempts at strategy have gone astray and get a sense of the political machinations underlying these decisions.

Right off the bat, they point out that there are valid times for the country to tap into the SPR, particularly after natural disasters and significant domestic disruptions. But the report makes it clear that Joe Biden made this decision in a transparent effort to keep oil and gas prices down until the midterm elections. After that, he plans to begin refilling the SPR to some extent. If prices rise again after the election is safely behind him, who cares, right?

IER also notes both the paucity of oil drilling permits offered by the Biden administration thus far (the lowest number since the 70s) and the way that this administration has sought “to end the use of fossil fuels.” They note that previous administrations of both parties have viewed domestic oil and gas production as “a positive and necessary objective.”

IER also notes the irony of Biden asking for help in getting more oil into the loop (and even threatening oil and gas companies if they try to increase exports) but he is threatening to sue OPEC members for “price manipulation” even as he is manipulating prices himself, or at least trying to.

I’m not sure if Joe Biden is even aware of this, but the people who run the oil and gas industry are basically not taking him seriously in any manner because his policies are both ineffective and damaging to their business interests. Why would they be motivated to put their own necks on the line to bail him out politically? The short answer is that they don’t have any intention of doing so.

Joe Biden needs to figure out how he’s going to replenish the SPR. Given how cheap that oil was when it was deposited in the reserve and how much oil costs now, the country is going to take a massive financial beating just to get back to where we were a few years ago. And we’re being put through all of this just so Joe Biden can try to win a few more votes in the midterm if gas prices don’t spike too much further before election day. This is a transparent scheme, and nobody who understands the industry and has been paying any attention is falling for it.