You make some good points, but they still miss the mark.
Oil demand dropped in March of 2020 due to a self imposed economic recession which saw annualized GDP drop by over 30% at the same time, Russia and Saudi Arabia entered into a price war. The collapse in demand and the flood of international oil supply came on literally overnight and as a result, not only demand, but prices dropped to $17/barrel.
Prior to that oil pretty much stayed above the magic $40-45 per barrel since 2005 except for early 2016 This drop in demand and price being triggered by economic fears over Trump's election and the Fed raising interest rates, both of which were very short lived and once Powell backed down from raising interest rates and the Russian collusion story lost steam, the economy returned to normal
Much of America's oil and gas needed a $40-45/barrel price to be profitable, so many marginal wells got "capped" since no one knew how long the Covid recession would last and Fauci kept calling for more lockdowns and tougher restrictions and so the wells stayed capped even as oil prices rebounded and we made up the shortfall with imports.
As an aside, the Biden administration was also proposing a tax on BTUs that would have raised the cost of US oil and gas production substantially meaning executives would need prices closer to $60/barrel over a long period to justify investing in new production. Not something that looked very promising in light of the policies, Biden's adminstration was pursuing and the historical price of oil and gas prior to Covid.
Meanwhile, as you point out, roughly 60 days after the lockdown oil storage facilities were maxed out and oil production dropped off the cliff (it takes some effort to cap a well).
But then demand began to reemerge, this demand was met with imports since wells had been capped. The world was in recession, it was easy to import oil from countries that extract oil at far lower cost than the US can. So why not...
Then as oil prices would have called for the oil companies to go back into full on production, Biden began to promise how he would drive down fossil fuel demand with his green energy policies.
As the possibility of Biden winning increased due to Covid, oil executives began planning for a Biden presidency, which meant not making major oil and gas investments.
So Biden's campaign "promises" influenced energy production as far back as the summer and early Fall of 2020, even while Trump was President. But while his promises impacted the oil production, demand was was recovering as the economy was recovering.
The combination of Biden's domestic policies that caused production to stagnate (the net increase in 2021 is largely due to the drop in production in 2020 rather an increase over pre Covid levels) and stimulating demand with stimulus checks on top of a normal recovery along with a worldwide economic recovery contributed to a global oil shortage that caused prices to rise quickly.
At that point, an intelligent decision would have been instead of stopping the construction of the Keystone pipeline (which would have replaced nearly 100% of the lost US production) to have initiated a "project Warp Speed" like effort to get it on line as soon as possible.
His recent decision to release one million barrel of oil a day from the strategic oil reserve is a political one (since it will be in place only until the November elections are over). But if it were coupled with an effort to get the pipeline built and some means to assure the oil companies that the government is not going to turn on them as soon as they can, then his decision to use the strategic oil reserve would be a good one.
The truth is simple. Biden realizes we need at least one million barrels a day of increased domestic production or Canadian oil imports but rather than put forth a plan to achieve that, he has put forth a plan to buffer the oil shortage until the November elections have passed... got to love how how politics work...
So, you are right oil production dropped off a cliff during Covid while Trump was President, but the job of getting oil production back was Biden's. He is the president trying to lead a post Covid recovery and a key to keeping inflation under control during that recovery will be cheap energy prices. So far, Biden is failing. And as for why should we give the economic value of Canada's oil to Canada, is simply they are a better country to do business with than the other oil exporters.
