According to AAA, the average
gas price in West Virginia today is $4.07. Some parts of the country are paying
more than $5.00—or even more than $6.00!—per gallon of regular unleaded
gas. As a country, we’ve surpassed the highest recorded average gas price ever.
Unfortunately, this was all
too predictable given the Biden administration’s domestic energy policy
actions.
On Day One of his presidency,
President Biden managed to immediately kill thousands of union jobs and
paralyze America’s energy industry with the Executive Orders that killed the
Keystone XL pipeline. At peak capacity, the pipeline would deliver 830,000 barrels
of oil per day to American refineries.
The president also put a
moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal lands, moving America from
energy superpower back to an increased reliance on foreign adversaries for fuel
feedstocks. Equally as important, these are countries that have much laxer
environmental rules.
The Biden administration has
also been openly against all-of-the-above energy resources and anti-pipeline
with its rhetoric, through its actions, and embodied by the people they have
elevated to leadership roles like Gina McCarthy and John Kerry.
The administration has also
injected regulatory uncertainty at a time of record inflation.
And, they want to completely
rewrite the definition of WOTUS – otherwise known as Waters of the United States
– to regulate ponds and ditches (even on private lands) all across the country.
A broader definition will devastate energy production as well as sectors like
agriculture and home building at a time when their products are already in high
demand and under immense inflationary pressures.
To add onto this, the
administration is considering new, tighter methane regulations that will also
raise energy costs, including for home heating and electricity bills.
It’s revising the regulations
to implement the National Environmental Policy Act—otherwise known as
NEPA—undoing the streamlining that was done during the Trump administration.
NEPA touches nearly every infrastructure project in our country.
More red tape means more
costs for producers. This regulatory uncertainty is increasing energy prices
for Americans across the board and is felt the most acutely at the gas pump.
Then you have the Energy
Department slow walking the buildout of LNG export terminals, which means we
can’t export much-needed energy to our allies as efficiently as we could be.
Endless regulatory delay and
environmental lawsuits – including on permits already issued – delay more than
pipelines and kill more than jobs. They also crush our economy with inflation
and leave us, and our allies, more susceptible to bad actors like Russia,
Venezuela, and Iran.
All of these actions have a
tremendous chilling effect on investments, buildout, and research and
development of domestic energy infrastructure.
This couldn’t come at a worse
time.
In fact, we’re seeing the
importance of energy independence play out in real time with the destruction in
Ukraine.
The Biden administration’s
policies that I just outlined, weaken our ability to provide an energy backstop
to our European allies trying to break their Russian oil and gas habit.
Right now, the world is
begging for American leadership. Ukraine is begging for American leadership.
Europe is begging for American leadership. That includes energy leadership.
We need to incentivize
American energy infrastructure buildout, drill on federal lands, and provide
regulatory certainty.
We must address the poor
energy policy decisions of the Biden administration in order to unleash full
American energy production to provide long term energy affordability for
ourselves and our allies.
We must act quickly because
the energy security of the free world depends on it.
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