ExxonMobil unleashes ‘much needed’ affordable energy with the industry’s biggest refinery expansion in 10 years. This is significant news with a few facts:

• Near the Gulf Coast just east of Texas’ oil-rich Permian Basin, nearly 2,000 ExxonMobil contractors are making sure the company’s latest project is pumping oil at full capacity
• It means the creation of 1,700 good paying jobs.
• Beaumont, which sits about 80 miles east of Houston, has seen a $500 million influx from the project.

After launching America’s largest oil refinery expansion in over a decade, ExxonMobil’s Senior Vice President of Global Operations Janet Matsushita detailed how the company’s Beaumont complex is not only fueling U.S. energy supply, but also the economy.

“When you put it all together and you look at this particular location, what I love about it, it allows us to buy what I consider to be very much needed, affordable energy, and in a very reliable supply to fuel the economy that we have here in Texas, the U.S. and, I say, across the globe,” Matsushita told Fox News Digital.

She is absolutely right. America is better when it’s powered by American energy. Energy affordability, first and foremost, helps American households with a lower cost of living. And affordable energy helps nearly 8 million American small businesses who provide goods and services every day.

At the same time a cleaner gas alternative to electric vehicles is being developed by Exxon and Chevron. Innovation and entrepreneurship like these need to be encouraged.

Bottom Line: America is stronger when we’re energy independent. Exxon’s refinery expansion, the largest in a decade, will help us reach that goal by fueling our energy supply and economy.

If your utility bills haven’t already gone up, brace yourself. It’s coming. Some are predicting as much as a nearly 30 percent spike in electric bills this summer.

What amounts to taxation without representation takes place when this is allowed to happen: The U.S. EPA to propose first controls on greenhouse gases from power plants.

Unelected bureaucrats at the EPA are trying to regulate coal and natural gas plants out of existence.
American oil and gas producers are reducing emissions faster than any other country. Why is the Biden administration intent on destroying affordable energy?

The US is doing more than other countries on carbon capture, etc. We need to do more to incentivize, not punish, American energy producers.

Regional natural gas companies agree to more than $9 million in air quality fines.

• The EPA announced Thursday settlements with three natural gas processing companies for their alleged violations of the federal Clean Air Act.
• The settlements total $9.25 million that will be shared among the federal agency, six states (Alabama, Colorado, Louisiana, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming), and the Southern Ute Indian Tribe.
• The agreements also require improvements to be made by the companies at 25 gas processing plants and 91 compressor stations across 12 states and two Tribal communities.

So, President Biden, what are you doing about China and the rest of the world in such matters? These fines and over-regulation are the game plan for how he and the federal government plan to increase the cost of natural gas, which basically will be paid by U.S. consumers. It will hurt small businesses, farmers and low- and middle-income wage earners the most.

Bottom Line: President Biden and the EPA seem intent on punishing natural gas and oil companies while also blaming them for high prices. Instead, they should embrace American natural gas – a Clean, Affordable, Reliable Energy Source (CARES).