WASHINGTON — As the war in Ukraine has sent gasoline prices soaring, Republicans in Congress have focused on their favorite scapegoat: the Democrats.
One target of opportunity is Kansas Rep. Sharice Davids. The National Republican Congressional Committee released an ad Thursday holding her accountable.
“Sharice Davids and Joe Biden crippled American energy production,” the ad says. “Now you’re paying the price.”
The ad — one among a batch aimed at Democrats perceived as vulnerable in this year’s congressional elections — is in stride with a larger push by Republicans to promote increased domestic energy production.
Missouri and Kansas lawmakers have loudly joined the chorus.
In the past two weeks, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley proposed a bill he said would “restore America’s energy independence.” Kansas Sens. Roger Marshall and Jerry Moran sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to increase domestic energy production (along with a request that he bar the U.S. import of Russian oil, which Biden did last week). Kansas Rep. Ron Estes asked people to sign a petition calling for American energy independence.
Politicians have often blamed the party in power when gas prices start to soar. The call for American energy independence goes back to the 1970s, when the Arab Oil Embargo sparked long gas lines. The beleaguered Carter administration had to create a system for allowing people access to the pump based on their license plate numbers.
Energy independence is premised on the simple idea that if America produces all that it needs at home, it’s no longer reliant on other countries. That means more jobs, shored-up national security and an economy insulated from shock waves to the global energy supply.
It’s a strong campaign message. But in a global economy, the concept of American energy independence is far more complicated — and doesn’t guarantee quick relief at the gas station.
“Whether the United States is energy independent or not, quote unquote, energy independent, the prices of oil and everything that comes from oil, like gasoline, are set in a global market,” said Victor McFarland, an associate professor at the University of Missouri who specializes in energy and the environment. “And we’re vulnerable to changes in those prices, whether or not the United States produces the oil we consume at home.”
A global market
Let’s say Congress passed a law that required every oil producer in the country to ramp up their production to the absolute maximum. So they boost investment in oil wells and fracking, where drills inject high-pressure liquid and materials to produce oil or natural gas from deep in the ground.
First, that would take months. Second, it would add only around 1 million barrels of oil a day — in other words, 1 percent of the global oil market, because the world consumes an average of 100 million barrels of oil a day.
“So it’ll bring prices down, but not that much,” McFarland said. “And it certainly wouldn’t be instant, big relief for the kind of pain that people are feeling at the pump right now.”
Already high because of supply chain issues due to the pandemic, the global market for oil has increased because of the war. Along with the United States banning the import of Russian oil, companies like Shell had already stopped buying Russian oil for publicity reasons. Markets are also sensitive to uncertainty of any kind. In this case, it’s uncertainty over whether the conflict will worsen, whether Russia will cut off oil to Western Europe, and whether the pipelines that run through Ukraine will be destroyed.
But, given the price increases, Republicans have been quick to also blame environmental policies they say limit the amount of oil and gas the country produces.
After Biden took office, his administration made a couple of moves that irritated Republicans and the fossil fuel industry. It officially canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and it said it would not issue new leases for oil and gas drilling on federal lands.
Those decisions attracted criticism but haven’t significantly affected energy production in the short term. Oil and gas companies signed leases before Biden took office and could technically open up more drilling on the federal land at any time.
“Even if Biden changed that policy and allowed more new leases on federal land, that wouldn’t yield any results for years, because we’re talking about brand-new wells,” McFarland said. “They’d have to go and explore and drill, and that takes a long time.”
Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston, said the transition from former President Donald Trump to Biden hasn’t really affected the fossil fuel industry. Construction on the Keystone XL pipeline didn’t move forward significantly when Trump was in office, and only one of the four pipelines pending on his watch moved forward — the Dakota Access.
The biggest reason the U.S. has been able to increase its energy output has more to do with natural gas than with crude oil. It’s a result of innovations in fracking technology in the past two decades. Natural gas does not power the internal combustion engines that are in most cars and hasn’t significantly reduced our dependence on foreign oil. The majority of our oil imports come from Canada.
Republicans aren’t the only ones using rising gasoline prices to argue for a change in domestic energy policy. On Thursday, the White House tweeted that a transition to electric vehicles will eventually reduce the world’s reliance on crude oil. The message instantly sparked backlash from Republicans.
