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AFTERNOON TEA
Afternoon TEA: Joe Biden’s 🇺🇸 Energy Fiasco
Earlier this year, we compiled a list of President Biden’s “green-at-any-cost, anti-energy actions and their costs to the American people. Since then, energy prices and inflation have only continued to skyrocket. While government actions have long affected the country’s direction, never has an Administration so drastically penalized an industry—the domestic natural gas and oil industry—and incentivized –renewable energy. And, when the government picks winners and losers like that, it’s the American people who pay.
Since this agenda shows no signs of slowing here’s an update:
- Biden’s Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a rule that would require public companies in the U.S. to disclose greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related risks. The SEC itself estimates the rule will cost most firms approximately $500,000 a year to implement—costs that will inevitably be paid by American consumers.
- As another one of his first acts in office, President Biden issued an executive order to “pause new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or in offshore waters.” While a court thankfully overturned that “pause,” Biden’s Interior Department recently canceled lease sales in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. If the Administration finally gets the full ban on leases its clearly aiming for, it would cost 936,000 jobs and a $700 billion decline in GDP by 2030.
- Biden finally cut off energy imports from Russia. But rather than increasing American production to fill the gap in supply, the Administration chose a bad to worse approach and explored ways to increase production or ease export restrictions in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
- As one of his first acts in office, Biden canceled permits for the Keystone XL costing 60,000 jobs and $3.6. billion in wages.
- Biden considered shutting down the Line 5 pipeline in Michigan which would result in a loss of 33,755 jobs, $20.8 billion in economic activity and $2.36 billion in wages and benefits.
- Biden’s EPA repealed a rule that said local entities could not take more than a year to approve or deny permits for utilities and oil and gas pipelines. Just some of the pipelines that are currently stalled or were canceled because of these kinds of stalling tactics include: the Mountain Valley Pipeline which would sustain about 5,800 jobs and $5.9 billion in economic activity, the PennEast Pipeline with 12,000 jobs during construction and 2,000 jobs following, and the Jordan Cove Project with 6,000 jobs during construction and up to $100 million in state and local tax revenue.
- The Biden Administration has frequently floated a “methane tax” on natural gas. If passed, it could cost American households over $9 billion and about 90,000 jobs.
- The Administration even considered an export ban on oil and gas which would cost us jobs, economic growth and erase the $200 billion reduction in our trade deficit that we achieved over the last decade.
- Biden reversed a policy that would have allowed oil and gas development in Alaska, which could create up to 130,000 jobs in the state.
- And, despite a pile of campaign promises that he would not ban hydraulic fracturing, the Biden administration let a ban take hold in the Delaware River Basin. A national ban would eliminate 19 million jobs and reduce GDP by $7.1 trillion by 2025.