East Arizona News

As critics charge that President Joe Biden’s energy policies have affected the supply of oil in the U.S., leading to gas prices higher than $4.60 per gallon in Arizona, the president is looking to foreign oil sources as a possible solution to the problem.

Some domestic pipelines have been shut down during the past year, and federal land drilling leases were halted by Biden. Those policies have hurt the domestic supply, leading Biden to turn to countries such as Iran, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia for fossil fuels, according to a report by Fox News. However, Biden’s policies cannot quickly satisfy the domestic need for oil, as other elected officials continue to push to eliminate the use of fossil fuel, some analysts argue.

"I think we need to be moving away from an economy that’s based on fossil fuels, that’s the way of the past and we need to be moving toward the future," Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) said in a video on the Washington Free Beacon’s website.

In the video from May 2020, Warnock of Georgia told Brionte McCorkle that he would support a carbon tax to spur the use of fossil fuels.

Biden has also said that he wants eliminate fossil fuels. During a campaign event held in New Castle, New Hampshire on Sept.6,  2019, he told an attendee, “I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuels.”

In December 2021, the White House announced that Biden planned to end to federal funding for most international fossil fuel projects, citing a desire to exercise global leadership on climate change, according to E&E News. In addition, Keystone XL Pipeline was shut down in June 2021 after Biden revoked a needed permit for a1,200-mile stretch of the project in the U.S. This decision was supported by Warnock.

"Raphael Warnock helped kill the Keystone Pipeline and American energy development — causing Georgia’s gas prices to spike and our country to lose its energy independence," Stephen Lawson of 34N22, a pro-Republican super PAC, said in the Washington Free Beacon article.

The pipeline was poised to bring 830,000 barrels of oil a day from Canada’s Western tar sands to U.S. refiners, CNBC reported. Such policies have raised concerns with some in Congress, who have pointed out the incongruity of seeking foreign oil while trying to limit domestic production.

"The hypocrisy of this administration to continue to consume fossil fuels knowing full well that we can produce them here cleaner, safer, more environmentally sound and yet go to rely on tyrants around the world to produce them for the United States is just terrible," Sen. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) told Fox News.

According to the American Automobile Association's gas tracker, the average price of regular gas in Arizona is above $4.61 per gallon.