Biden Is Courting Saudi Arabia and Venezuela as He Bans Russian Energy Imports
Biden Is Courting Saudi Arabia and Venezuela as He Bans Russian Energy Imports
A better option would be for Biden to ask more friendly nations, such as Canada and Mexico, for increased oil output, said AS/COA's Eric Farnsworth to Fortune.
Gas sure is expensive these days.
It hit an all-time high of $4.17 a gallon this week, and that was before President Joe Biden took the once-unthinkable step of banning Russian oil imports on Tuesday.
To give you an idea of how wild that is, Biden and his allies in Western Europe had chosen in late February to sanction just about everything except for Russian oil, even after Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It took more than a week of fighting, and Putin rattling a nuclear saber, before Biden took this step…
A U.S. delegation reportedly visited Caracas, Venezuela, over the weekend to meet with top government officials and iron out a deal to bring more Venezuelan crude oil to market…
“It's a new world,” Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas/Americas Society, a research forum focusing on economic and social development, told Fortune. “To send senior officials to Caracas to try to get more oil from a leader who is sanctioned and under indictment shows a real sense that increasing oil supply is of huge interest right now to the U.S.”…
However, Farnsworth said that he is skeptical that Venezuela would be able to make up for Russia’s contribution to the global oil supply, citing the deficiencies of Venezuela’s oil infrastructure after years of economic hardship and U.S. sanctions.
“In order to get the Venezuelan industry to where it would have a meaningful contribution to global oil supply in a way that would affect U.S. gas prices, that's years down the road and multiple billions of dollars of investment, which I don't predict would ever happen,” Farnsworth said…
“It’s pretty good politics to show the American public that the administration is pushing on all fronts,” Farnsworth said, adding that a better option would be for Biden to publicly turn to more friendly nations to ask for increased oil output, such as Canada and Mexico.
“[Canada and Mexico] are all oil-producing countries and not under sanctions. They're democratic countries. They could produce more in a shorter time than it would take for a country like Venezuela,” he said…
