My previous two columns documented numerous examples regarding ways that Biden family foreign influence peddling has compromised confidence in America’s stature and leadership independence from extortion.
Both articles have discussed troubling Hunter and Jim Biden entanglements in foreign oil interests which are compounded by administration policies that now give adversaries dangerous leverage over our national security.
The first of these writings addressed evidence brought forth by Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski that Joe Biden was indeed “the Big Guy” who was to receive a 10% stake in a multi-million-dollar venture with CEFC, a Chinese energy company headed by a high-level Communist Party official, when he was running for our nation’s highest office.
A 2018 voice recording message on Hunter’s “laptop from hell” offers clear evidence that Joe knew about his son’s CEFC business.
The immediately previous column expanded this discussion to include Biden family deals in China and other countries while Joe was serving as vice president.
They included a $1.5 billion deal Hunter’s company inked with the Communist state-owned bank of China 10 days following a 2013 Beijing trip with his dad aboard Air Force Two, and murky circumstances surrounding Vice President Biden’s public braggadocio about withholding $1 billion from Ukraine unless they fired the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma, a corrupt energy company that was paying no-experience Hunter $50,000 monthly as a no-show board member.
The previous Oct. 12 article also noted a peculiar recent sale of nearly 100 million barrels of precious oil from the U.S. Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to a Chinese company with which Hunter formerly held a large financial position.
Now, as a consequence of inflationary anti-fossil policies, the Biden administration has desperately continued to drain our SPR and sought oil bailouts from OPEC+, Venezuela, and potentially Iran ahead of midterm elections.
President Biden returned from a mid-July Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pleading for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its Russia-led allies to pump more oil with less than nothing to show for it.
On Oct. 7, OPEC+ did exactly the opposite, voting to reduce production by 2 million barrels daily.
According to the Wall Street Journal, just days before the snub, Biden White House officials including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had pleaded for the Saudis and other big Gulf producers with an urgent appeal — delay the decision for another month.
Biden representatives told the Saudi Kingdom that if they granted the delay, the U.S. would buy oil on the international market to replenish America’s SPR, now depleted to a record low level not seen since 1985.
As reported, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iraq and Bahrain had previously pushed back privately against the proposed cut, while Russia had lobbied to turn down the White House request, which the influential Saudi’s viewed as a political gambit by the Biden administration to avoid bad news ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.
Rather than address the self-inflicted dilemma by refilling the SPR and American gas pumps with abundant oil under our feet, President Biden and fellow anti-drilling and pipeline Democrats are instead contemplating ways to punish the Saudi’s for not producing more of the stuff.
Biden told CNN, “I am in the process, when the House and Senate gets back, they’re going to have to — there’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done with Russia.”
None of the penalties being discussed will benefit either the election-beleaguered Dems or our nation. They will only push the Middle East into closer ties with Russia.
One counterproductive suggestion is to cut off U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia for a year or more, making them more vulnerable to Iran. Another would remove all U.S. troops (about 3,000) from the Kingdom.
Some Democrats favor a so-called “No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels” (NOPEC) bill that would allow the Justice Department to file antitrust suits against the cartel and state-owned oil companies, which would only invite retaliation against U.S. companies.
It should give no American comfort knowing that Putin’s Russia regime which holds great sway in OPEC+ membership and tightening relationships with Saudi Arabia is serving as the Biden administration’s designated negotiating representative in attempting to resurrect Iran’s return to the Obama July 14, 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), aka, "Iran Nuclear Deal," which Trump cancelled.
As noted by Reuters, the Islamic Republic's clerical leaders are keen to strengthen strategic relations with Russia against an emerging, U.S.-backed Gulf Arab-Israeli bloc that could shift the Mideast balance of power further away from Iran.
Both countries win if together they can collaboratively pressure the Biden administration to lift current sanctions against Tehran oil sales.
And if not Iran, what about Venezuela?
As reported by CNN.com, Biden officials traveled there to meet with representatives of Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship in March for "talks on potentially allowing the country to sell its oil on the international market, helping to replace Russian fuel."
In exchange for sanctions relief, his corrupt Venezuelan government would presumably discuss conditions needed to hold free and fair presidential elections in exchange for a deal that would free up hundreds of millions of dollars in Venezuelan state funds frozen in American banks.
According to Wall Street Journal sources, the Biden administration is preparing to scale down sanctions on Venezuela’s authoritarian regime to allow Chevron Corp. to resume pumping oil there, which the company is eager to do so that it can recover losses it is already owed by the state.
Venezuela was once a major oil producer, pumping more than 3.2 million barrels a day during the 1990s, but the state-run industry has collapsed over the past decade because of underinvestment, corruption and mismanagement.
All such prospective deals will require a clever U.S. negotiator with extensive expertise dealing with ruthless regimes who are hostile to our interests.
Given that Biden has said that Hunter is the “smartest man I know,” perhaps he’s being groomed as his best choice. He has certainly gained vast experience dealing with some very bad hombres.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.