Biden releases oil from US reserves in hopes of easing inflated prices
The panel on 'The Five' offer reaction and analysis
President Biden was simply paying more lip service to the inflation and oil price crisis when he ordered the release of 50 million barrels of oil from the United States' Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Jesse Watters said Tuesday on "The Five".
While 50 million barrels may seem like a large amount of the precious commodity, the nation will use that up in about 2½ days, Watters said.
"Joe does not seem very concerned, does he? He wants higher prices – I guess he said it makes it easier to transition to green [energy]," he said. "He does not want to pay a political price, so they do the silly release, which is nothing."
President Joe Biden boards Air Force One at Brussels Airport in Brussels, Tuesday, June 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
"That is like your mother asking you to bring her something for Thanksgiving and you show up with two Triscuits. What is that going to do? We are not going to get anywhere."
Watters suggested OPEC has been ignoring Biden's pleas for more foreign production while the president could solve the crisis by simply reverting to domestic drilling on federal lands in Alaska as President Trump supported, and to reestablish the Keystone XL pipeline project between Alberta, Canada, and the Gulf Coast.
Host Dana Perino further added that Biden's deputies didn't fare much better under press questioning Tuesday, with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm responding that she does not know the amount of oil the United States consumes per day.
"You should probably know that if you are the secretary of energy," Perino said.
US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm speaks during the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference, annual meeting of all the IAEA member states, at the agency's headquarters in Vienna, Austria on September 20, 2021. (Photo by JOE KLAMAR / AFP) (Photo by JOE KLAMAR/AFP via Getty Images)
"Joe Biden talked about how long he has been in Washington and how much experience he has [but] any president who tries to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is not actually in an oil emergency. It’s like a gnat on an elephant," she said.
Perino said Biden is likely hoping this latest move will make the crisis disappear during and after the holiday weekend.