Biden’s Energy Independence

How did the United States achieve energy self-sufficiency? It moved to clean energy and allowed private exploration, exploitation and fracking.

The war in Ukraine has caused oil prices to rise to their highest figures since 2008. This obviously increases gasoline prices. In the United States, where the Mexican Special Tax on Products and Services does not exist, gas prices increase and decrease according to the price per barrel of oil and change very quickly. Yesterday (Mar. 8, 2022), I listened to the testimony of an American who described how, on their way to the gym that morning, the price per gallon was $4.06 and when they left after their exercise, the price per gallon had already risen to $4.17.

Despite this increase in price that obviously no consumer likes to pay, yesterday (Mar. 8, 2022) President Joe Biden announced the ban on oil and natural gas imports coming from Russia.

Although Europe wanted to join the ban announced by Biden, the old continent’s dependence on this energy stopped them. This reliance helps to finance the mad butcher Vladimir Putin and keep him in power. How is it that the United States can survive living without the fuel from Russia when Europe cannot? It’s easy. The U.S. under the presidency of Richard Nixon observed that Arab countries cut their oil supply to Israel during the Yom Kippur War. From that point in 1973, Nixon decided to strive for energy independence. And, although no country is 100% self-sufficient in terms of energy, the U.S. is no longer a net importer of energy sources because of being the second most important producer in the world.

This is a source of envy for someone like Andrés Manuel López Obrador who, day in and day out, speaks of wanting to achieve energy independence for Mexico. But, and this is a big but, the United States achieved it in a way radically different from the attempts of the president of Mexico. While López Obrador is going all in with a single public company — Pemex, which extracts the oil necessary for Mexico’s demand and refines it sufficiently to not have to import petrol — in the U.S. the motivation to achieve this independence has been from two sides. On one hand, many companies and entrepreneurs invest, extract, refine and sell oil and its derivatives; on the other hand, the country strives to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and to move to clean and renewable energy sources.

Nixon announced “Project Independence” in 1973. At that time the U.S. was importing 2.1 million barrels a day. The idea was to achieve self-sufficiency by 1980, which was impossible because of, among other reasons, the Iranian Revolution. Even so, from that point the U.S. started to think about alternative energy — solar, wind, electric — to reduce its dependence on international fluctuations and to lead the ecological movement that emerged as a result of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989.

During the 1990s, which saw the birth of the oil “supermajors,” and 2014 the U.S. arrived at its lowest point of oil imports: 260,000 barrels a day. And oil production rose from less than 1 million barrels a day in 2010 to more than 4 million barrels for 2015, exceeding the individual production of each member of OPEC, except Saudi Arabia.

How did the U.S. do it? It reduced the demand by generating incentives to move to clean and renewable energy and allowed private exploration, exploitation and fracking (drilling into the ground and pumping in liquid to extract oil and gas). Therefore, today the United States has the energy self-sufficiency that allows it to cut the importation of Russian oil and gas.

That is energy self-sufficiency. The other plan — the one that López Obrador promises — is a lot of hot air and will soon cost Mexicans a fortune in order to finance Pemex, which loses and loses and loses money.