Mayor Andy Ogles Comments on Congressman Mark Green’s New Bill Proposing a Ban on Receiving Oil from Russia, Iran, and Venezuela

Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. –  host Leahy welcomed Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles in the studio to weigh in on Congressman Mark Green’s recent legislation calling for a ban on all oil from Russia, Iran, and Venezuela.

Leahy: I’ll say it again, joined by – I don’t know how many times I can use this Maury County catchphrase, but I’ll use it again a second time – Here’s the Mayor of Maury County, that bastion of freedom, that turbo-charged engine of economic growth, our good friend Andy Ogles.

Ogles: Makes me smile every time.

Leahy: You know, I wrote a book way back in 2009 called Rules for Conservative Radicals. And basically, I took the concepts of Saul Alinsky, who wrote Rules for Radicals – which, by the way, he dedicated his book to Lucifer.

Ogles: Yeah, right.

Leahy: That gives you an idea of what the Left does with this. But he had some tactics that are very effective. And one of the rules is that a tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. And so we have to be careful about catchphrases. Right? We can’t drag it on too long. We just do it just the right amount.

Ogles: Just enough. But at the same time, is it a catchphrase, or is it just truth?

Leahy: Boom! It’s really not a catchphrase. It’s just the truth.

Ogles: It’s just the truth.

Leahy: (Chuckles) Now what’s interesting, Andy, I look at this, and I’m not a foreign policy guy. I didn’t serve in the military. I have traveled to Europe once. I’ve traveled to Mexico and South America.

But as tourists, right? I am a domestic policy guy. Domestic politics and domestic economics. I know stuff about that in the U.S. Constitution. I’ve studied that a lot. But when it comes to foreign policy, that’s not my forte.

But there are others who have a forte in foreign policy. And then also anyone whoever represents the 5th district in Congress, when they step into the House of Representatives in January 2023, there will be foreign policy issues to address.

Now, Mark Green, who represents the 7th Congressional District, actually does have military experience, graduated from West Point, also served as a combat officer, and also served as a doctor.

And of course, we all know that he served in Iraq. And the night that they captured Saddam Hussein, Mark Green was in the cell with him, looking after him and talking to him through the evening. So he’s got some experience.

This is a very important issue, and I want to talk about it a little bit because it does have to do with economics and common sense, which is entirely lacking from the Biden maladministration. Here’s the story.

Congressman Mark Green introduces his bill to ban the purchase of oil from Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. U.S. Representative Mark Green on Monday introduced legislation to ban the U.S. from purchasing oil from Russia, Iran and Venezuela. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have expressed support for banning the purchase of Russian oil amid the country’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. However, the Biden administration has remained hesitant to make the decision. Your thoughts, Andy?

Ogles: There’s a lot going on here when it comes to oil and energy dependence or independence. Back in the day, my course of studies, international relations, and specifically Russia and Asia, which includes the Arab Peninsula.

Leahy: Oh, hold on. You’ve told me this before, but it kind of slipped my mind. Your study was in?

Ogles: International relations, which is a political science and economics kind of degree that kind of crashes in the middle.

Leahy: You mentioned that before.

Ogles: I studied Russian and German and Japanese and Arabic over the years. So it’s been an interesting career.

Leahy: You studied them.

Ogles: Yeah, that’s right. I don’t claim to be a speaker. My strongest language was always Japanese, followed by Russian.

Leahy: My strongest language, English.

Ogles: I actually struggled with English.

Leahy: Insert punchline here.

Ogles: Southern-speak slips out every now and then.

Leahy: Southern is your native tongue.

Ogles: That’s right. So there was an argument to be made, Russia is resource-rich. And you check the list, whether it’s oil or minerals or precious metals or timber, they’ve got it. It’s a huge, vast country.

And by allowing them or encouraging them to develop their energy resources, it’s kind of like what you saw on Germany by developing that middle class. Freedom kind of takes hold and it changes and transforms the nation.

But in that process, Europe has become overly dependent on Russia’s oil. Germany has shuttered its nuclear capabilities.

Leahy: Bad mistakes.

Ogles: You have the greenies in Europe. There are huge resources of gas and oil off the coast of Greece, Cyprus, and Israel. And we’ve done nothing to really develop that and give those countries freedom.

I mean, look at the GDP of Greece. If they had the ability to develop their gas and oil industry, what that does to that economy. Right? But because of all the lawsuits, et cetera. And that’s not been developed, and they’re overly dependent on Russia.

Leahy: This Nordstream One, is a pipeline for natural gas or oil?

Ogles: There are all sorts of pipelines running from and through Europe that have basically withered away.

Leahy: From other places.

Ogles: That’s right. Because they’re not developing that infrastructure. And then if you cross the pond and come back to the United States, you look at Texas, I think there are somewhere around 1,300 rigs that are permitted. There are existing rigs that can start pumping today, but only about 400 are operating because of all the regulations.

Leahy: Nordstream, it’s a system of offshore natural gas pipelines in Europe. It runs from Russia to Germany. And Nordstream One was constructed so that all the natural gas to heat Europe in the winter was coming from Russia. They became dependent on Russia.

They sent their money to Russia. Not the most geopolitically smart thing to do. The Biden administration, the very first thing they did after they canceled the Keystone pipeline to bring energy here to the U.S. from Canada, they gave the green light to Nordstream Two to make Europe further dependent upon Russia.

Ogles: And Europe, especially Eastern Europe, is heavily dependent on natural gas for heating their homes. And so you’ve got to have those resources. And like I said, Germany shuttering their nuclear facilities.

And you come back over here and we’re not maximizing the oil that we have in the ground. We know it’s there. The equipment is sitting on top of it in Texas and we’re not doing anything.

We’ve gotten rid of all the federal leases to pump the oil off of your federal lands. And so here domestically, we’ve done everything wrong to create a dependency on our enemies, Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Leahy: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s interesting now, when you look at this, the Biden maladministration, the people that run it, they have no common sense. And the Left that are promoting various elements of the ‘Green New Deal’ have no common sense.

They’re subsidizing solar, they’re subsidizing electric vehicles, they’re subsidizing wind. Meanwhile, they’re driving up the price of oil and gas in the U.S. by stopping the Keystone oil pipeline, which would bring more oil here by stopping development in federally owned lands here.

We’ve gone to being energy-dependent now. In the last months of the Trump administration, we were energy-independent. And so as the price of oil price of gas goes up and up and up, it becomes increasingly difficult for Americans in terms of just the basics of the household budget.

Ogles: Because I’m a big nerd and I have nothing else to do, I was reading some analyst reports on the projected prices of oil. You’ve got some pretty heavy hitters in that space saying that $181.00 and $185.00 a barrel is on the horizon.

Leahy: Yes, it’s gone up to $130. Here’s what’s interesting about this. So this great idea, this proposal by Mark Green, we’re not going to buy oil from Russia. We’re not going to buy oil from Iran or Venezuela.

All three of those are dictatorships that hate our guts and so we shouldn’t be dependent on them. That’s a very good idea. It would, in the short term, increase energy prices for fossil fuels here.

But the counterbalance which the Biden administration should do but won’t do, is to open up the Keystone pipeline and open up the spigots here for us to produce oil and gas.

Ogles: I fully support what Mark Green is because we have the capabilities domestically to offset what they would provide us. We want to subsidize Iran’s economy?

Have you not been paying attention the last 50 years? Venezuela? Again, this is just nonsense. And it’s the exact same pattern that we’ve gotten into with Russia and the over-dependence on their natural resources.

And then you’ve you look at precious metals in China. And again, your cellphone, these batteries for cars, all those metals, a big chunk of them are in China.

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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Background photo “Mark Green” by Sue Tapp Lile.