US Energy Independence Is Small Comfort in Ukraine Crisis

US Energy Independence Is Small Comfort in Ukraine Crisis

International and Arab News

In 2020, for the first time in 69 years, the US exported more energy than it imported. The numbers for 2021 aren’t all in yet, but everything is pointing to an even bigger energy surplus. The long journey that began during the 1973 oil crisis with President Richard Nixon’s “Project Independence” and its goal of “achieving self-sufficiency in energy” would seem to have ended.

Yet as Russia invades Ukraine, threatening disruption of global oil supplies, Americans aren’t exactly celebrating their energy independence. Instead, they’re fuming about high gasoline prices, with some even arguing that those prices are so high because President Joe Biden “destroyed American energy independence.” It’s mostly Republicans who say that, but some Democratic lawmakers have been pushing the White House (so far without success) to curb oil and gas exports to bring prices down at home. Meanwhile, the US and its allies are constrained by Russia’s oil and gas riches in their reactions to its assault on Ukraine.

So … maybe energy independence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Or maybe being a net exporter of energy doesn’t really make a country energy-independent.

Producing more energy than you consume does, to be sure, seem to be