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President Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia on Friday to meet with officials from the desert kingdom — which holds the world’s largest oil reserves — and is expected to meet with leaders from five other oil-producing Persian Gulf nations on Saturday, in what will be the latest in a series of moves by the Biden administration to boost oil supplies to reduce high gasoline prices.
This approach represents a significant shift for the president, who campaigned on promises to restrict domestic fossil fuel development as part of his effort to combat climate change.
Earlier this month, Biden threatened to break a campaign pledge to stop selling leases for oil and gas production offshore and on federal land when the Department of the Interior (DOI) released a proposed five-year plan for offshore oil and gas drilling that could allow new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and in Cook Inlet in Alaska.
And last Friday, the administration moved toward approving a giant oil drilling project in Alaska that is opposed by climate change activists. The project, owned by ConocoPhillips and known as Willow, was previously blocked by a federal judge who ruled its environmental review did not adequately consider the effects on climate change. DOI issued a new environmental impact analysis that reviewed several options and caused opponents to fear that the administration was signaling support for the project.
“Giving the Willow Project a stamp of approval after this rushed and incomplete review process could be the kiss of death for any chance at meeting President Biden’s climate commitments,” said Lena Moffitt, chief of staff at Evergreen Action, in a statement responding to the new analysis.
Given the longtime lag between the new fossil fuel leasing and any effect on prices, experts say that none of these measures are likely to lower prices in the foreseeable future.
“There are few options in the U.S. presidential toolkit to lower fuel prices in the short term. Biden has been using the ones he has, from the wise move of selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the more economically questionable proposal of a federal gas tax holiday,” noted Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution, in a blog post published Thursday on the think tank’s website.
