During his announcement of the US ban on Russian oil imports on Tuesday, President Joe Biden told us: “It’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production. That’s simply not true. […] We’re approaching record levels of oil and gas production in the United States, and we’re on track to set a record next year.”
As usual, the president was lying to the American people.
President Biden: “It’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production. That’s simply not true. […] We’re approaching record levels of oil and gas production in the United States, and we’re on track to set a record next year.” pic.twitter.com/eEpgwpwROR
— The Hill (@thehill) March 8, 2022
Even now, when the world, including America, is in crisis, instead of relaxing regulations or even providing incentives to oil and gas producers to increase the U.S. supply, the Biden Administration sees this as an opportunity to transition to green energy. It doesn’t matter that the energy derived from windmills, solar panels and other renewables is woefully insufficient to power the U.S. economy.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, “renewable energy sources accounted for about 12.6% of total U.S. energy consumption and about 19.8% of electricity generation” in 2020.
The left’s green energy dream is simply not possible right now. Perhaps, with advances in technology, it will be one day.
But until that green utopia becomes a reality, we need to work with the resources that are available to us right now.
The Biden Administration’s hostile relationship with oil and gas producers has many of them thinking twice about starting new projects. What we’re hearing repeatedly from energy analysts is that energy producers are afraid to pour billions of dollars into new projects because they simply don’t trust this administration not to suddenly change regulations, either directly on the industry or through the banks that finance these ventures, that will force them into huge losses.
Naturally, government officials from the president on down, vehemently deny that their policies are responsible for the decrease in the domestic supply of oil and gas.
The latest Democratic talking point is that there are currently 9,000 approved drilling permits outstanding.
During his Tuesday address, Biden said, “And the remaining 10% that occurs on federal land, the oil and gas industry has millions of acres leased — they have 9,000 permits to drill. Now, they could be drilling right now. Yesterday, last week, last year, they have 9,000 [permits] to drill onshore that are already approved.”
“So let me be clear: they are not using them for production. That’s their decision,” he added. “These are the facts. We should be honest about the facts.”
It should be noted that whenever Biden prefaces something with “Let me be clear,” “in fact,” or tells us something “is a fact,” he’s about to lie.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki has also made this claim at least twice so far this week in her press briefings.
Psaki was deliberately misleading the public and industry representatives were quick to call her out on it.
On Monday, she told reporters that the United States is producing oil “at record” levels. She said, “there are 9,000 approved drilling permits that are not being used. So, the suggestion that we are not allowing companies to drill is inaccurate. I would suggest you ask the oil companies why they’re not using those if there’s a desire to drill more.”
American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Sommers responded to Psaki’s remarks. He told Fox Business News on Monday the permit is only “the first step in a process that includes investigating whether there is any oil or gas in the land.”
“This represents a fundamental misunderstanding as to how this process works. Once you lease land there is a whole process that you have to go through,” Sommers said. “First you have to actually discover whether actually there is oil and gas in that land. Second of all, you have to get a permit to actually develop that land.”
“Right now we actually are developing more leases than we have in two decades so the White House certainly doesn’t have their facts straight on this,” Sommers added.
Fox also spoke to American Exploration & Production Council CEO Anne Bradbury who said, “That accusation is a complete red herring. It’s really a distraction from the fact that this administration has paused leasing on federal lands, something that we’re concerned about and something that we think needs to continue right away.”
She pointed out that the Biden administration is “required under the law to sell oil and gas leases on federal lands. … These leases take many years to explore, to develop and produce on.”
Energy Workforce and Technology Council CEO Leslie Beyer told Fox that “some permits are viable and some are not. … The moratorium on leasing certainly adds an additional … block to American energy production, so that is the opposite of what we need to be doing right now. We need to stop the rhetoric that’s anti-fossil fuel and we need some clarity just in the regulatory sense that this administration is behind domestic energy production.”
In the Twitter thread below, freelance commentary Drew Holden explains (with receipts) precisely how the Biden Administration has waged war on the fossil fuel industry.
Just two weeks ago, Biden froze new drilling permits and stopped leases on federal lands because a court ruled that they couldn’t use an elevated “social cost of carbon” to make it more difficult to drill.
Instead, they shut the whole process down: https://t.co/qI5W9LYZmI
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
This opposition to domestic energy production isn’t new. When Biden first took office, he moved to ban new oil and gas leases on federal land (a huge slice of US energy) via executive order.
The measure was eventually stopped by the courts. https://t.co/YYB892TBAi
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
Back before gas prices hit record highs, Biden’s allies were praising the Admin for taking bold steps to limit fossil fuel production.
One of their key points? We, supposedly, already had enough supply “to meet domestic needs.”https://t.co/XykMTgCPGH
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
Biden also proposed ending a wide range of tax benefits for drilling and exploration, something supporters said would hopefully “discourage additional oil and gas development.”
This makes the process more expensive, particularly when competing with heavily subsidized renewables. pic.twitter.com/w4fS3iI4uy
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
And I’m sure that no one has forgotten that Biden shutdown the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office.
But what you may have forgotten was that this was part of a broader suite of efforts to “reverse ‘more than 100’ Trump-era policies.” https://t.co/5YqxDldQQE pic.twitter.com/NwhKbnze22
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
Taken together, these early moves represent what climate activist Bill McKibben said “may well mark the official beginning of the end of the fossil-fuel era” arguing “they send a decisive signal about the end of one epoch and the beginning of another.” https://t.co/mOwnGo7bQq pic.twitter.com/eaMJ9PUfrf
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
In June of 2021, Biden suspended oil and gas leases that the Trump Admin had granted in Alaska, outraging local officials and ending one of the key actions Trump took to expand domestic energy production. https://t.co/VLsRmao1N9
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
All of these federal efforts came with a clear goal in mind: sending a signal that the days of fossil fuels would be ending soon.
Again, once upon a time, the corporate press was comfortable admitting this was the goal:https://t.co/IRkBmQHjTS
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
These signals matter.
Extractive industries like oil & gas rely heavily on tea-leaf-reading, because even seemingly small gov’t actions can have huge impacts for a heavily regulated industry. A quick, easy-to-follow breakdown of some of the reasons here: https://t.co/Yp3b2SB2Og
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
And it wasn’t just Biden acting on his own.
As @SaysSimonson wrote about for @FreeBeacon, Dems in Congress have pushed to restrict domestic energy production even as prices have climbed:https://t.co/1IePRV4NbW
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
Congressional Dems have also taken steps to add tighter (and in some cases, just punitive) regulations that make it harder for domestic energy companies to do business, including regs on offshore oil & regarding methane.
Naturally, making a process harder increases the cost. pic.twitter.com/IwrT454L4J
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
And there were numerous hearings where Democrats have demonized the oil and gas industry in colorful but seriously dubious ways, making the industry’s standing on that side of the aisle clear. pic.twitter.com/cqwalOqdnN
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
Plus, something that gets left out of the current discourse is that numerous states have banned or proposed banning fracking, an effective way to access hard-to-reach energy sources.
I’ll give you one guess which politically party was behind these efforts. pic.twitter.com/DHoHoZOXW4
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
Now, to be clear, the impacts of some of these efforts have been overblown.
Despite trying to ban new drilling on federal lands, lots of plans have moved forward to do so – more than under President Trump’s first year (largely b/c of Obama-era rules), but fewer than last year. pic.twitter.com/smVuE47qXc
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
And it isn’t reasonable to blame Biden – or any president – exclusively for the price of oil and gas. The world is just more complicated than that.
Here’s a good primer on some of that complexity: https://t.co/huY5fg56Bq
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
But it’s intellectually disingenuous for President Biden to pretend that he and his party haven’t taken action to make domestic energy production more difficult and, as a result, have made energy more expensive.
They’ve done a lot with the explicit goal of doing just that.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
The inconvenient truth is that Biden campaigned on ambitious climate goals. Those aren’t likely to get done organically, so he and his administration have tried to apply pressure to traditional energy sources.
Now that prices have jumped, they’re trying to pretend otherwise.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
Increased costs have always been a good-faith concern about climate efforts among lots of people, left, right and center.
Biden and his team ignored those warnings and helped make the bed they find themselves laying.
Rather than admit that, now they’re trying to memoryhole it.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 10, 2022
H/T: Twitchy
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Just remember that it is the people who consented to this tyranny, when it gave up on stopping a stolen election. Maybe it’s time for an old fashioned coup, similar to what the Ukrainians did, back when they kicked Yanukovich out of power. We, the people did not ask to pay more for everything. This is pretty apparently the policy of the thief in the White House, and his entire administration.
I sure hope someone doesn’t come around and tell me I’m no patriot, or some other nonsense. The only ones I can think of, who probably wanted all this increase in costs, are those who aren’t paying for it, and that is not 81 million people.