The search for new sources of oil to replace the millions of barrels Russian firms produced and sold each day is leading the Biden administrations to extremes.
No, Camp Biden is not considering a change in heart toward U.S. production (which rests somewhere between antipathy and disgust). Rather, it’s courting another oil-rich global pariah, Venezuela:
[President Nicolás] Maduro confirmed details of the meeting…speaking on Venezuela’s state-run television. He said he met the U.S. delegation for a two-hour meeting at the presidential palace in Caracas, joined by his wife, Cilia Flores, and Jorge Rodríguez, president of the National Assembly and one of the most powerful people in the Venezuelan government.
The meeting was “respectful” and “very diplomatic,” Maduro said, and the two countries “agreed to work on an agenda moving forward.” He said Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, once recovered, is prepared to ramp up production “for the stability of the world.”
“The flags of Venezuela and the United States were there and they looked nice, the two flags, united as they should be,” Maduro said. “I thought it was very important to discuss, face to face, issues of maximum interest to Venezuela and the world.”
Setting aside that self-congratulatory spin, there’s a bit of a problem with Venezuela – that whole International Criminal Court investigation into crimes against humanity thing.
Even some Democrats pushed back:
“Nicolás Maduro is a cancer to our hemisphere and we should not breathe new life into his reign of torture and murder,” Menendez said in a statement. “The Biden administration’s efforts to unify the entire world against a murderous tyrant in Moscow should not be undercut by propping up a dictator under investigation for crimes against humanity in Caracas.”
Well sure. But it’s not out of character with Biden – or previous administrations going back to the 1940s – to look past a murderous regime’s crimes in order to cut deals for its oil.
As opposed to…you know…exploiting the oil and gas right under our own feet.
