A hard winter looms for Americans’ energy bills and wallets. Blame Biden.

By Paxton Wagner and Katie Tubb | The Daily Signal

This is going to be a hard winter for your wallet.

President Joe Biden’s war on American energy has not reached its peak. Gas prices remain high, and the Biden administration has no workable plan to reduce them.

The rise in energy prices is visible every time Americans fill up their vehicles. In November, the national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.68 per gallon, up from the monthly average price of $3.39 per gallon in November 2021. That’s far higher than average price for past Novembers, $2.42 per gallon, in the five years prior to Biden’s election.

Too many Americans are finding that the pain doesn’t stop at the pump. The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s winter fuels forecast projects that American households across the board will pay more this winter to heat their homes than last year.

The Energy Information Administration breaks down its projections based on regions of the U.S. and heating sources. For example, in the South, where 65% of households rely on electricity for heating, bills are projected to be 13% higher this winter. However, the South may be better off this winter than the rest of the country, which is more dependent on natural gas.

Natural gas is used for heat in only 28% of Southern households, but 55% of households in the Northeast, 64% in the Midwest, and 53% in the West. The Energy Information Administration projects heating expenditures for those households to significantly increase in all regions this winter compared with last winter: 20% in the Northeast, 31% in the Midwest, and 24% in the West.

High energy prices are projected to be the worst for New Englanders, where costs are the highest for every source of home heating that the agency tracks.

Overall, energy prices have increased by 18% in the past year and inflation is at 7.7%, a 40-year high. To make matters worse, real average hourly earnings have decreased by 2.8%, making it harder to pay energy bills.

American households need to hope for a warmer winter to reduce some energy needs, but hope is not a plan, nor is it an energy policy.

Biden’s anti-energy policies are only making things worse. The Biden administration tried to reduce prices with short-term releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. All in all, Biden has released more than a third of the strategic reserve, and the stockpiles are now at a 40-year low.

Americans’ energy woes could be eased in the long term if Biden would allow American companies to access the country’s abundance of energy. However, the administration has made very clear it has no intention of improving Americans’ access to the oil, natural gas, or coal that meet 79% of Americans’ total energy needs for heat, power, and transportation. (Nuclear energy provides 8% of Americans’ energy needs, and renewable sources, such as solar and wind, provide 12%.)

Biden has openly fought to minimize American energy production, whether by ending the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office or by preventing new drilling leases from being approved and throwing up dozens of regulatory roadblocks to building new energy infrastructure. The administration’s strategy is to reduce the production of conventional fuels in order to solve climate change, instead of solving the real problems of everyday Americans, such as high energy prices.

The president’s anti-energy policies are unsustainable. The best way to lower energy prices is to increase American energy production and help other countries do likewise. But if Biden has his way, high energy prices will be here to stay.

Image courtesy of Bruce Parker/TNR

10 thoughts on “A hard winter looms for Americans’ energy bills and wallets. Blame Biden.

  1. Biden’s treasonous handlers are purposely creating shortages and high prices in the US, by excessively shipping our oil, coal and natural gas to Europe and Asia, to make EVs and heat pumps look good.

    However, electricity prices are increasing, which benefits GMP, but makes EVs and heat pumps look bad.

    The end result, almost everyone gets screwed, because of clumsy, naive interferences with market forces.

    But most of you voted for those clowns, so you got what you voted for.

  2. Former KGB agent and now dictator Valdimir Putin’s attempt to re-establish the “evil empire” of Soviet times is a main cause of the disruption and increase cost of world energy supplies.
    Not to recognize the gravity of this threat to freedom loving people and that some sacrifices, miniscule compared to what the people of Ukraine are making, are needed would be as shortsighted as those who allowed Hitler to proceed in his quest for power.

    • And had Biden not ‘won’ the U.S. presidency, would Putin have caused this havoc?

      What’s the common denominator? Putin had been in power for decades. He first attacked Ukraine during the Obama administration. Remember the Obama ‘hot mic’ message to Putin in 2012? … that he (Obama) would have more flexibility after his election? Is it a coincidence that Putin attacked Crimea (in Ukraine) less than two years later?

      Then Trump is elected president in 2016. And what’s the democrat rallying cry… ‘Russian collusion’, all fabricated by the DNC Steele Dossier and perpetuated by ‘the swamp’.

      But the U.S. becomes energy self-sufficient under Trump anyway. Putin and Russia stop their shenanigans. The cost of heating oil peaks at $2.75 per gallon in 2018, falling to under $1.50 per gallon in 2020.

      And then? Well, we all know what happened? Heating oil costs more than $5 per gallon today. All while Mr. Freitag spins his version of history with more of the common progressive/democrat narrative. Blame Russia, Russia, Russia.

      No, Mr. Freitag. It was Biden, Biden, Biden.

    • Not quite.

      In 2021, well before Ukraine, Ideological, idiot EU bureaucrats told member states not to sign long term natural gas contracts with Russia, and instead buy nat gas on the SPOT market.

      Spot market rates soared, as predicted, because Russia sells gas only under long term contracts, as is standard in the industry

      In 2022, the US/UK blew up the NORDSTREAM 1 and 2 lines in the Baltic Sea, to ensure severely impacted Germany would not make a nat gas deal with Russia.

      UK PM Truss sent a one-word message to US Secretary Blinken “DONE”, just a few minutes after the four near-simultaneous explosions. Just google.

      • Consider the timeline, Willem. This all happened AFTER the Biden adminstration stifled U.S. energy dominance. The whole scenario likely would not have occured had Trump still been president.

        Biden Did That!

        • Since the collapse of the Soviet Union,Valdimir Putin who was a KGB agent at the time has sought to rebuild in much the same way the empire forged by Stalin. I would recommend the books Gulag and Iron Curtain – The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum for anyone interested in learning the mindset and methods of Putin.

          There are stark differences between the totalilarian dictatorshiips of Russia China and North Korea and the democracies of the West. These truly evil governments, as Ronald Reagan recognized, must be opposed. When a valiant people stand up despite overwhelming odds against an invader intent of subjugating and destroying their country, they deserve our support.

  3. The potato head does have a plan, he will continue to lie and blame it on Putin and the propaganda unit msm will not challenge him or his lies. The leftist marxist in CONgress are writing up more restrictions on Americans drilling for energy as we speak. Meanwhile we allow countries who don’t care about environmental consequence’s to do the drilling for us going back to depending on our enemies for our energy… what a policy what a puppet and how stupid the voters have become.

  4. Welp, we just had a mid term election.

    According to that, people have voted to freeze, starve and be driven deeper into poverty..

    So here we are.

    At least all of us deplorables that have no representation know how to survive..

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