A former Keystone XL pipeline worker criticized President Joe Biden after the White House announced that it would be releasing more oil from the reserve ahead of the midterm elections in November.
Speaking to FOX Business, welder Neal Crabtree called out Biden’s ignorance when it comes to the gas crisis.
API Statement on @POTUS Remarks on Gas Prices: pic.twitter.com/5xRAeufBgF
— American Petroleum Institute (@APIenergy) October 19, 2022
“I don’t know how he gets away with keep saying that he doesn’t have anything to do with [high gas prices] when they’ve got everything to do with it,” Crabtree said.
Crabtree and hundreds of other workers on the Keystone XL project in Nebraska were laid off after the president took office on Jan. 20, 2021. Shortly after his inauguration, Biden canceled the federal permit for the Keystone XL pipeline in favor of the “development of a clean energy economy.”
“As far as my side of the industry, we’ve seen our man-hours cut almost — well, more than half. We got people that lost health insurance, they’re not getting retirement benefits, they’ve had to find different careers,” Crabtree continued. “When you’re 40, or 45 years old, starting over ain’t the easiest thing to do. You spent all your time building your skill set and then all of a sudden you’re making a minimum wage. It can change your life.”
“It’s not just Keystone. Ever since day one — I can name you dozens of other pipelines that we were expecting to build here in the last couple of years, and they can’t get the permits,” he added.
This comes as Biden announced on Wednesday that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) would be releasing 10 to 15 million more barrels of oil in an apparent effort to lower gas prices.
“We need to responsibly increase American oil production without delaying or deferring our transition to clean energy. My administration has not stopped or slowed US oil production,” the president said. “Without the steps we’ve taken over the last several months, gas prices would be higher than they are today.”
About one million barrels per day are being released from the SPR through October. The flow is draining the reserve, which last month fell to the lowest since 1986. However, White House officials claim that oil prices could be higher if the SPR had not been tapped.
