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Biden chose Venezuela over Canada for oil

Published

2 years ago

6 minute read

From the MacDonald Laurier Institute

By Brian Lee Crowley

Biden is welcoming oil from one of Latin America’s most odious regimes. It’s a big win for Nicolás Maduro, but a bad deal for America and Canada

The United States needs more heavy oil for a whole series of reasons. President Joe Biden could have chosen to have that oil come from a close friend and ally, environmentally-conscious Canada, or from one of the world’s nastiest regimes, Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela, which doesn’t give a toss about the environment. Which did he choose?

Venezuela, of course.

In exchange for modest concessions on electoral reform, the Biden administration just lifted sanctions on Venezuela, allowing them to export hundreds of thousands of barrels a day of vital heavy oil to the United States. The shale oil revolution has not and cannot change the fact that the US produces virtually no heavy oil, yet many of this country’s refineries, especially on the Gulf Coast, were set up to refine that kind of oil. Most of their heavy oil is from Canada, which is why that country is far and away the largest exporter of oil to America— more than twice as much as Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Russia, and Colombia combined. If America is now a net exporter of oil, it can thank Canada.

The war in Ukraine caused unpopular price hikes at the gas pump. In response, the Biden administration has drawn down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). That drawdown focused on medium and heavy crudes. OPEC responded with supply cuts aimed at throttling the supply of these strategically important crudes.

The drawdown of the SPR is reaching its limits but the risk of higher gas prices in an election year is rising. To OPEC and Ukraine, we must now add the heightened risk of conflict spreading in the Middle East.

In this context, recall that one of the very first acts President Biden took on reaching office was to cancel the permit for the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline, a permit issued by his predecessor. Keystone XL was intended to provide 830,000 barrels a day of Canadian heavy crude to those Gulf Coast refineries. Pipe was already being laid.

Had President Biden allowed KXL to proceed, the supply of heavy oil to the US industry would have been secure, risky drawdowns of the SPR unnecessary and America would have been much less vulnerable to global supply disruptions and OPEC’s manipulations.

Instead, the President colluded with a campaign to vilify oil from Alberta’s oilsands as “dirty oil.” Yes, producing Canada’s heavy oil emits greenhouse gases. But then all heavy oil is GHG intensive, and Venezuela is the highest emitting in the world.

The Canadian oil & gas sector has invested heavily and successfully in emissions reductions. The industry has a $75 billion plan to decarbonize and achieve net zero by 2050, focused on carbon capture and storage and small modular nuclear reactors.

Venezuela has done nada in terms of real improvement in the environmental footprint of its heavy oil production. What it does have is a regime that is world-leading in terms of its human rights abuses and the damage it has inflicted on a once-prosperous economy. Every dollar America spends on Venezuelan oil will prop up one of the most violent and repressive regimes in the Americas, where Amnesty International says in 2022:

The security forces responded with excessive force and other repressive measures to protests…to demand economic and social rights, including the right to water. Impunity for ongoing extrajudicial executions by the security forces persisted. Intelligence services and other security forces, with the acquiescence of the judicial system, continued to arbitrarily detain, torture, and otherwise ill-treat those perceived to be opponents of the government of Nicolás Maduro.

A recent UN Fact Finding Mission to Venezuela talked about the “unremitting human rights crisis” and patterns of crimes against humanity in that country. Nearly 8 million Venezuelans are estimated to have fled the economic and humanitarian crisis there.

Meanwhile, Canada, while not perfect, has robust human rights protections and high environmental standards. It is also a magnet for immigrants (including tens of thousands of Venezuelans), having one of the highest shares of its population born elsewhere in any country in the world.

In 2021 President Biden was happy to offend one of America’s closest allies by blocking KXL because it was inconsistent “with my administration’s economic and climate imperatives.”  Three short years later, behind the fig leaf of Venezuelan electoral reform, he is welcoming much more environmentally damaging oil from one of Latin America’s most odious regimes, all to try and keep the price down at the pump. That’s a big win for Nicolás Maduro, but a bad deal for America and Canada.

Brian Lee Crowley is the Managing Director of the Center for North American Prosperity and Security (www.cnaps.org).

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Energy

Rulings could affect energy prices everywhere: Climate activists v. the energy industry in 2026

Published on December 29, 2025

By

From The Center Square

By 

Anti-oil and gas advocates across the country have pursued litigation in recent years attempting to force the fossil fuel industry to pay for decades of financial damages the advocates claim were caused by climate change.

Several cases have been dismissed while others advanced through court systems, with some being considered before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2026. Critics of the litigation call it “woke lawfare” and an attempt to force progressive political policies via the judicial system.

Critics also argue the lawsuits threaten U.S. energy independence and, depending on outcomes, will have sweeping impacts on every American.

Here are some of those cases.

Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana

On Jan. 12, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, vs. Chevron USA Inc. The case questions to what extent a state court can litigate against an oil company for its production of oil even if it obtained federal permits to produce the oil.

The litigation challenges activities of the oil companies dating back to World War II in some cases. Chevron argued the lawsuit was flawed, claiming that the activities in question were permitted, legal, and often conducted under federal direction – particularly those tied to national security during World War II.

A Plaquemines Parish jury in April ordered Chevron to pay $744 million in damages for its role in the degradation of the state’s coastal wetlands. Environmental activists celebrated the verdict. It was the first of 42 lawsuits filed since 2013 by parishes across coastal Louisiana to go to trial.

The Trump administration’s Justice Department stepped in on Chevron’s side, urging the Supreme Court to move the case from state court to federal court.

Business groups and energy advocates warned the verdict will drive jobs and investment out of Louisiana. The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry called the decision “shortsighted,” saying it would “brand Louisiana as a state that will extort the most recognizable companies on earth for billions of dollars, decades later.”

O.H. Skinner, executive director of Alliance for Consumers, told the Center Square the case seeks to score large settlements from the energy industry and stop oil production.

“The case arises from a broader campaign of woke lawfare in which activists and municipal governments seek to use courtrooms to determine what companies are allowed to produce and what consumers can buy,” Skinner said.

Suncor Energy Inc. v. Boulder

The nation’s highest court is still deciding whether it will hear arguments in Suncor Energy Inc. v. Boulder; a case to decide whether state and local governments can use nuisance laws to sue energy companies for activities that may cause climate change.

The case, originating in Colorado, centers around a City of Boulder and Boulder County lawsuit in state court against Suncor Energy claiming it misled the public in its activities that the local governments claim led to climate change effects.

Lawyers for Suncor Energy argue that allowing a case like this one to play out goes against protections in the Clean Air Act that prevent lawsuits from occurring against emitters from across state lines.

“Public nuisance can’t be used for global problems. It can be used for local problems,” Skinner told The Center Square. “That’s what it’s supposed to be used for.”

However, Skinner said many organizations that are pursuing climate change litigation are seeking to bankrupt energy companies with large monetary settlements. He said litigants will likely attempt to drain energy companies of their resources and use the funds to advocate certain ideological causes.

“These are highly ideological dark-money-funded, multi-faceted legal campaigns to bankrupt an entire industry and confiscate it for ideological reasons,” Skinner said.

City and County of Honolulu v. Sunoco

Similarly, in 2020, City and County of Honolulu v. Sunoco was one of the first examples of public nuisance lawsuits pursued in a state court. The city and county of Honolulu filed a lawsuit in 2020 accusing oil and gas companies, including Sunoco, Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron and Shell, of misleading the public for decades about the dangers of climate change induced by burning fossil fuels.

The companies asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in the case, but the court, without ruling on the merits, declined to do so in January.

While the case is based in Hawaii, Skinner said litigants there hope it will have far-reaching effects across the country.

“They’re not trying to stop behavior just in those states,” Skinner said. ”The thing that really freaks me out is how people in regular, everyday, real America are going to potentially be affected.”

The People of the State of California v. Exxon Mobil Corporation

Going a step further than Boulder and Honolulu, California Democrat Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a complaint against ExxonMobil in 2024 for what he says are its contributions to “the deluge of plastic pollution” affecting the state.

Exxon countersued, alleging “Bonta and the US Proxies – the former for political gain and the latter pawns for the Foreign Interests – have engaged in a deliberate smear campaign against ExxonMobil, falsely claiming that ExxonMobil’s effective and innovative advanced recycling technology is a ‘false promise’ and ‘not based on truth.,” American Tort Reform Foundation reported.

One of the foreign interests is  IEJF, an Australian nonprofit that’s connected to an Australian mining conmpany “that competes with ExxonMobil in the low carbon solutions and energy transition markets, ATRF reported.

Skinner said the litigants in this case are attempting to significantly reduce plastic use throughout the state of California and potentially beyond.

“That’ll make your average person’s life dramatically harder, and it’ll make a lot of things a lot more expensive, and it’ll make having kids, like, brutal,” Skinner said.

Leon v. Exxon Mobil Corp.

Aside from monetary settlements, petitioners in this case also are seeking wrongful death claims against energy companies for their contributions to climate change. The case stems from a woman in Washington state who said her mother died from heat-related illness due to the exacerbated effects of climate change.

She is suing energy companies for their alleged creation of conditions over a period of decades that led to increased temperatures on the day her mother died.

Skinner told The Center Square this case is one of the more blatant examples of ideology affecting the way a litigant pursues cases.

“I think they care because a death is worth a lot of money,” Skinner said. “The climate homicide cases are one of the more far-fetched legal theories I’ve ever seen, because you’re leveling this incredibly staggering charge.”

Climate cases will continue to move through the court system, with one to be heard before the U.S. Supreme Court in early 2026.

Skinner is urging the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts to rule in favor of energy companies across the country.

“We want the energy companies to win, not because they are perfect actors, but because the alternative is that our lives are governed day in and day out by woke trial lawyers, woke [nongovernmental organizations] and local governments,” Skinner said.

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Daily Caller

US Halts Construction of Five Offshore Wind Projects Due To National Security

Published on December 29, 2025

By

 

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum leveled the Trump administration’s latest broadside at the struggling U.S. offshore wind industry on Monday, ordering an immediate suspension of activities at the five big wind projects currently in development.

“Today we’re sending notifications to the five large offshore wind projects that are under construction that their leases will be suspended due to national security concerns,” Burgum told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. “During this time of suspension, we’ll work with the companies to try to find a mitigation. But we completed the work that President Trump has asked us to do. The Department of War has come back conclusively that the issues related to these large offshore wind programs have created radar interference that creates a genuine risk for the U.S.”

Predictably, reaction to Burgum’s order was immediate, with opponents of offshore wind praising the move, and industry supporters slamming it. In Semafor’s energy-related newsletter on Tuesday, energy and climate editor Tim McDowell quotes an unnamed ex-Energy Department official as claiming, “the Pentagon and intelligence services, which are normally sensitive to even extremely low-probability risks, never flagged this as a concern previously.” (RELATED: Trump Admin Orders Offshore Wind Farm Pauses Over ‘National Security Risks’)

Yet, a simple 30-second Google search finds a wealth of articles going back to as early as October 2014 discussing ways to mitigate the long-ago identified issue of interference with air defense radars by these enormous windmills, some of which are taller than the Eiffel Tower. It is a simple fact that the issue was repeatedly raised during the Biden Administration’s mad rush to speed these giant windmill operations into the construction phase by cutting corners in the permitting process.

In May, 2024, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) own analysis related to the Atlantic Shores South project contains a detailed discussion of the potential impacts and suggests multiple ways to mitigate for them. An Oct. 29, 2024 memo of understanding between BOEM and the Biden Department of Defense calls for increased collaboration between the two departments as a response to concerns from members of Congress and others related to these very long-known potential impacts.

The Georgia Tech Research Institute published a study dated June 6, 2022 detailing “Radar Impacts, Potential Mitigation, from Offshore Wind Turbines.” That study was in fact commissioned by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), a private non-profit that functions as an advisory group to the federal government.

Oh.

A report published in February 2024 by International Defense Security & Technology, Inc. describes the known issues thusly:

“Wind turbines can create clutter on radar screens in a number of ways. First, the metal towers and blades of wind turbines can reflect radar signals. This can create false returns on radar screens, which can make it difficult to detect and track real targets.

“Second, the rotating blades of wind turbines can create a Doppler effect on radar signals. This can cause real targets to appear to be moving at different speeds than they actually are. This can also make it difficult to track real targets.”

The simple Google search I conducted returns hundreds of articles dating all the way back to 2006 related to this long-known yet unresolved issue that could present a very real threat to national security. The fact that the Biden administration, in its religious zeal to speed these enormous offshore industrial projects into the construction phase, chose to downplay and ignore this threat in no way obligates his successor in office to commit the same dereliction of duty.

Some wind proponents are cynically raising concerns that a future Democratic administration could use this example as justification for cancelling oil and gas projects. It’s as if they’ve all forgotten about the previous four years of the Autopen presidency, which featured Joe Biden’s Day 1 order cancelling the 80% completed Keystone XL pipeline, a year-long moratorium on LNG export permitting, an attempt to set aside more than 200 million acres of the U.S. offshore from future leasing, and too many other destructive moves to detail here.

Again, a simple web search reveals that experts all over the world believe this is a real problem. If so, it needs to be addressed as a matter of national security. Burgum is intent on doing that. All half-baked talking points aside, this really isn’t complicated.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

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