Ask President Joe Biden, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and Colorado Attorney Gen. Phil Weiser to stop empowering foreign thugs. Ask them to stop killing Colorado jobs and raising prices at the pump. They want less oil and gas produced in Colorado and have no qualms with increasing dependence on foreign oil and all that goes with it.

As Biden fist-bumped the murderous Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman and groveled for oil, he embarrassed himself and handed credibility to a man who kills and tortures his opponents. Biden begged the prince, who only recently allowed women to drive, to produce more oil and send it to the United States in carbon-belching tankers.

Meanwhile, to settle the terms of a lawsuit initiated by Polis and Weiser, Biden’s Bureau of Land Management schemed a Colorado “resource management plan” that threatens to impede oil and gas development on a massive scale.

“The decision area includes all BLM public lands (in Colorado) and approximately 4.6 million acres of split-estate private, local government, and state lands,” explains a BLM notice in the Federal Register.

They want to suppress production in the name of protecting “big game migration.” No worries; maybe the prince will send oil the next time we beg.

The reason for Biden’s disgraceful scene in Saudi Arabia was obvious: Oil prices were setting record highs and hurting his image at home.

Never forget, Biden campaigned on a promise to eliminate fossil fuels. During his inauguration, he announced an order to stop construction of the carbon-neutral Keystone XL pipeline. Through words and actions, Biden has done everything possible to stop well-regulated and safe domestic oil and gas production.

Foreign energy dependence enriches and empowers civil rights abusers who produce with little or no concern for worker safety, pollution or climate change. Meanwhile, Democratic leadership restricts safe, emissions-regulated production at home and hopes the public will confuse it as good environmental stewardship.

What Americans don’t see are the 250,000 underprivileged people around the globe who die each year for lack of clean, affordable natural gas we hoard underground in Colorado. Instead, they cook and heat with dung, twigs and garbage that produce deadly indoor toxins.

Colorado sits on the country’s seventh-largest supply of oil and gas and has better safety and emissions standards than any other state. Our potential to pull more energy from the ground has significant ramifications for fuel prices and our country’s freedom from foreign dependence.

Colorado’s oil and gas industry funds education and rescues families from poverty. Fracking jobs pay good six-figure salaries to men and women who didn’t finish high school and had no hope of attending college. A high percentage of these jobs go to minorities who grew up in generational hardship.

In every way imaginable, humanity and the planet benefit when Colorado harvests oil and gas.

Despite this, Polis and Weiser sued the Bureau of Land Management a week before Biden’s inauguration to suppress energy production. They asked a federal judge to overturn the Resource Management Plan of then-President Donald Trump’s administration. As part of a settlement, Biden’s BLM wants to overturn a plan that expanded energy development across 675,800 acres of federal land and allowed production on 971,200 acres of state, local and private land with mineral rights in Delta, Gunnison, Montrose, Ouray, Mesa and San Miguel counties.

The pro-energy plan was devised after community meetings throughout Colorado. It was expected to contribute $2.5 billion in economic activity and establish 950 new high-wage jobs – mostly in rural regions devastated by losses of coal-related jobs.

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican representing the Western Slope, sees this as another attack on her region by urban politicians in Boulder and Washington.

“Biden’s latest Colorado land grab is another example of this radical regime’s deliberate assault on American energy and the economy,” Boebert said. “While Coloradans are facing historically high gas prices, the Biden regime is using every excuse and tactic in the book to block responsible domestic energy production.”

One-party control of our state and federal governments harms low-income households, kills good domestic jobs, empowers dictators and sustains energy poverty. Meanwhile, the party encourages poorly regulated production of oil shipped across the seas.

When anti-energy Democrats feign concern for human rights, the poor and the health of the planet, ask them to explain this ruse. Their energy policies contradict everything they say.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board