National Economic Council chief Brian Dees told CNBC that the Biden government is instead focusing on policies and strategies that can deliver lower fuel prices as soon as possible. He noted Biden’s decision on Thursday to begin releasing 1 million barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Oil Reserve over the next six months. “Any action at Keystone would not really boost supply and transmit years of oil in the future,” Deese said in an interview with Squawk on the Street. “What we are focusing on right now is what we can do right now and … there are wells that are closed and that can be restored to the internet over the next two months. What we need right now is to addressing the immediate interruption of supply “, he added. The Russia-Ukraine war shocked supply in world oil markets, which had already shrunk as demand recovered from cuts associated with the Covid pandemic. As crude oil prices hit record highs recently, so have petrol pump prices. Russia, a major energy exporter, has been hit by a wave of sanctions since its invasion of neighboring Ukraine. The United States has banned Russian oil imports in a bid to punish Moscow, and the United Kingdom is also phasing out. Oil prices fell from their lows in early March, when they traded at their highest levels since 2008, but are still up sharply for the year, amplifying inflationary pressures in the economy. West Texas Intermediate crude traded at about $ 100 a barrel on Friday, up 35% from 2022. Brent crude, the international benchmark, hovered around $ 104 a barrel. A refinery serving the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline is idle in Oyen, Alberta, Canada, February 1, 2021. Todd Corroll Reuters As oil prices soared in recent weeks, some Republicans called on Biden to reverse his course and immediately grant the necessary permits to build the Keystone XL, a proposed 1,200-mile project that would deliver oil from Canada to Canada. Biden revoked the permit needed to build the pipeline on the first day of his term last year. In June 2021, its subsidiary, TC Energy, formally shut down the $ 9 billion pipeline. It was first proposed in 2008 but has faced many delays due to legal challenges from environmentalists and Native American tribes. In addition to exploiting the country’s oil reserves, Dees said the Biden government wants to produce more than the roughly 9,000 federally licensed drilling rigs that have already been approved. Dees said this is the motive behind Biden’s decision to call on Congress to impose tariffs on companies that do not use wells from their public leases. “These wells that can come back, these will bring these millions of barrels a day in the short term, not the long-term questions we can discuss,” Deese said. “But the long-term questions really obscure what the short-term priority is. We try to keep our focus there.”
