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Oil is the lifeblood of the Russian economy, and the country’s leaders use their power over 11 million barrels of oil production a day as both defensive shield and offensive weapon in their diplomatic and military operations. The western world has deep reserves of oil that have gone untapped thanks to the efforts of environmentalists. Now it has come to light that those environmentalists have been funded in part by Russian disinformation operations aimed at curtailing energy production in the West. Fox News reports:
For years, world leaders have accused Russia of funding environmental groups in Europe to steer nations away from energy independence and strengthen Russia’s iron grip over the continent. As nations across the globe begin shunning Russian oil in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. leaders are also questioning how deep Russia’s ties go in the environmental community.
“The Russians actually fund some of the most rabid environmental groups in Europe because they sic them on the energy projects that aren’t Russian,” James Carafano, vice president of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital in a recent phone interview.
Back in June 2014, just months after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, European leaders sounded off that Russia was using disinformation operations with environmental groups to steer countries away from fracking in favor of Russian oil.
“I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations – environmental organisations working against shale gas – to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former prime minister of Denmark and then-secretary-general of NATO, said, according to the Guardian.
America has the capacity to produce all the energy required by its people, and under Donald Trump reached technical energy independence. Since Joe Biden has been in the White House, America has fallen back on its dependence on foreign energy and sends petrodollars abroad to many regimes that do not reflect American values.
Now Sen. Ted Cruz has introduced the Energy Freedom Act to restore America’s energy independence and to stop funding America’s global opponents via oil purchases. This should have been the nation’s strategy all along. FoxBusiness’s Houston Keene reports:
Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas introduced a bill to “restore American energy independence” amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine that is hitting the energy sector hard.
Cruz announced on Friday his new bill, the Energy Freedom Act, in a press release in which he blasted President Biden for having led America to lose our “status as a net petroleum exporter” with his energy sector executive orders.
“These policies have poured billions of dollars into countries such as Russia and Iran, which use those funds to attack our allies and undermine the national security of America,” Cruz said in his release.
“President Biden has imposed more restrictions on U.S. oil companies than he has on Russian oil,” the senator continued. “With Iran, he has looked the other way as the regime busted through sanctions and raised their exports to more than one million barrels per day for the first time in almost three years.”
Cruz also said he was introducing the Energy Freedom Act “to reverse Biden’s actions so we can restore American energy independence” and that the bill “won’t cost taxpayers a dime” while creating “billions in revenue in the coming years” for the U.S. “by expediting permitting, leasing, safe new pipelines, and exports, and providing much needed regulatory certainty.”
“It would create new jobs, lower energy costs, and because modern energy production in the United States is far cleaner than in any other country’s by every measure, it would help the environment,” Cruz said. “The Energy Freedom Act would put a stop to the Biden administration’s sabotage of the American energy industry, and Congress should take it up without delay.”
President Joe Biden on Saturday urged major G20 energy producing countries with spare capacity to boost production to ensure a stronger global economic recovery as part of a broad effort to pressure OPEC and its partners to increase oil supply. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci / AP Newsroom)
The Texas Republican’s bill comes as Americans across the nation are experiencing skyrocketing gas prices.
Read the entire Energy Freedom Act text here.
A version of this post was originally posted on March 7, 2022.
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