The White House is looking far and wide for ways to backfill the pending loss of oil imports from Russia, wary of additional pain at the gas pump leading to pain for Democrats in November. But the political risks of courting authoritarian leaders who happen to preside over oil fields may outweigh the benefits.
By Washington Examiner – Haisten Willis
Mar 9, 2022
The weekend before President Joe Biden announced a ban on U.S. imports of Russian oil, the White House sent a delegation to Venezuela to discuss a potential thawing of sanctions launched against the country in 2019, including on energy.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was one of many Republicans who came out swinging against the idea, tweeting that the country produces less than 1% of the world’s oil “because it is mismanaged by corrupt & incompetent criminals” and saying that any deal would have an insignificant impact on gas prices while providing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro with millions of dollars.
“We import about 200,000 barrels of Russian oil a day, and we can easily replace that by just producing 200,000 barrels a day more of our own oil,” he said in a subsequent statement. “We can easily do that, very quickly. We don’t need oil from Iran, we don’t need oil from Venezuela.”
But Rubio’s Democratic reelection challenger, Val Demings, also came out against the Venezuela talks.
“I am deeply skeptical of the new talks in Venezuela,” she said in a statement. “Maduro and his corrupt cronies must not personally profit from any deal.”
One reason is that Florida, a purple state trending red, is home to more than 200,000 Venezuelans, the Washington Post reported, including recent immigrants who fled the authoritarian regime.
White House officials maintain that the trip was also in support of American citizens who have been jailed in the country, including several oil executives from Citgo, but acknowledged that energy policy was part of the discussions. Russia and Venezuela are allies, so prying apart their relationship could also be a goal of the United States.
Biden and Democrats have been losing support among Hispanic voters, a demographic once thought to be an emerging Democratic constituency. Biden easily won the Hispanic vote in 2020, but at least one recent poll showed him barely ahead of former President Donald Trump among the voting bloc in a hypothetical 2024 rematch.
Venezuela has labored under intense economic sanctions since 2019, when Trump recognized a top opposition lawmaker as the legitimate president of Venezuela under the national constitution after Maduro claimed victory in elections widely condemned as fraudulent.
Maduro, who managed to remain in power with the assistance of Russia and China, has taken the war in Ukraine as an occasion to campaign for the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Venezuelan oil.
The benefits of doing so may be both small and slow for Americans, argues Atlantic Council senior fellow Emma Ashford. While Venezuela is one of a limited number of places that could offset Russian oil, the country’s production has been declining for years and never surpassed one-third of what Russia produces.
“You’d need Venezuela, Iran, plus probably increased Saudi and American production before you’d get close to breaking even on eliminating Russian oil from world markets,” she said. “I’m skeptical that could be done within months. It’s probably a process of years.”
Biden has been criticized for his administration’s clean energy policies, specifically an executive order he signed upon taking office that blocked new drilling permits on federal lands, which some critics claim are hindering domestic energy production.
The president defended that move Tuesday, claiming that “90% of onshore oil production takes place on land that isn’t owned by the federal government, and on the remaining 10% that occurred on the land, the oil and gas industry has millions of acres they’ve leased.”
The White House insists that the only long-term solution is to further green energy rather than increase U.S. oil output.
“We’re working with Europe to ensure we are all diversifying our energy security measures, and this is maybe a longer-term step, but this is a reminder of how important it is to do that,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, “to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, on foreign oil, on Russia, and on the whims of dictators.”
But for now, the Biden administration is faced with few good options to keep gas prices in check during the near term.
U.S. imports of Russian oil began inching up after the U.S. imposed sanctions on Venezuela in 2019. Now, that situation may be reversed as U.S. leaders look to offset the impact of Russian sanctions stemming from its invasion of Ukraine. But any move, if it is made, will be politically tricky for the president as he weighs the political fallout of higher oil prices and his perceived coddling of authoritarians.
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Read More: Washington Examiner – Courting Venezuela for oil could prove costly for Biden
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