Abundant natural gas

Steve Bannon to The New York Times:

“No Republican knows that oil production under Biden is higher than ever. But Jill Stein’s people do."

Steve Bannon was bragging. The strategy was too manipulative and clever to keep secret. Defeat Biden by peeling off Democrats to third party candidates.

Fossil fuels are the tool to do it.

While Americans who follow politics are watching the courts, every day oil rigs are punching new holes in the Permian Basin, in Marcellus Shale, and the Bakken Formation. The work of the world continues. Gas stations will be open for business, selling Americans all the fuel they want. Even environmentalists drive cars. 

The U.S. is energy independent. We have oil to export. We get so much natural gas as a byproduct of fracked oil production that in some places producers have to pay to have it taken away.

Biden doesn't get credit for the U.S. being the world's leading producer of both oil and natural gas. In the popular understanding of most Americans Biden is anti-fossil fuels and he has somehow weakened the industry. Most Americans presume prices are higher at the pump than they were four years ago because anti-fossil-fuel Biden has discouraged oil production. 

Steve Bannon is right. The one group crystal-clear that Biden has not shut down oil and natural gas production is the climate-activist left. The big story is that the Inflation Reduction Act is an $800 billion green energy subsidy bill. The better-known story, though, is that to get the IRA passed he caved to Senator Joe Manchin on a West Virginia pipeline. Then Biden agreed to some oil leases on Alaska's North Slope.

Collin Rees, the program manager at Oil Change U.S., an environmental group, said,

“Not only is [Biden] shattering all his climate promises, he’s also just making a mockery of his environmental justice claims. With young people in particular, that to me is the biggest miscalculation here. Setting aside all climate arguments, I think you are absolutely losing the youth vote and doing it for very unclear gain.”

Strong words: "Mockery." "Absolutely."

All this is complicated by the fact that the largest domestic producers of natural gas include the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Mexico, and Colorado. Democratic politicians in those states need to defend local industries. It positions local politicians in opposition to the national party.

Natural gas is cheap again. 

The climate activist left wants cheap, reliable solar and wind, and maybe even nuclear power, not an inexpensive fossil fuel. Natural gas prolongs the life of the fossil fuel industry. Its low price makes alternatives less competitive. Practical and economic reality run up against ideology and long-term goals. A new article of orthodoxy emerges for climate activists: Slow or reverse the transition to natural gas, because long term it is no better than coal.

That is the political dilemma for Biden. The message that the administration is taking charge of bringing Americans cheap, abundant energy -- and new, well-paying blue-collar jobs in rural areas -- is at odds with the goals of a key Democratic constituency. This issue does not finesse well, with messages of "transition" and "bridge" fuels to buy time. Infrastructure lead times are measured in decades, so natural gas development is correctly understood to be kicking the can down the road for a generation. The left sees climate as a crisis demanding immediate action. Compromise and delay are death.

The result is the worst of both worlds for Biden politically. The general public thinks Biden isn't doing enough to bring energy prices down. The environmental left thinks Biden has sold out to Big Oil. Each group will receive targeted media confirming that opinion. Steve Bannon is on it. RFK Jr. and Jill Stein are standing by.