Last week, we talked about the literal costs of the Biden Administration’s “green-at-any-cost” agenda in terms of job losses and long-term damage to our economy. This week, we want to take another look from a different perspective. The facts are these policies also have “hidden costs,” and after just over a year of this damaging energy agenda these costs are burdening all Americans, from sea to shining sea.

• When President Biden decided to “pause” new oil and gas leases as one of his first acts of office, the action was taken without opportunity for input from the states and their citizens that were affected. Because of that, 13 states—from Alabama to Utah—filed a lawsuit against the action. When a federal judge thankfully struck down the “pause,” he wrote, “Millions and possibly billions of dollars are at stake. Local government funding, jobs for Plaintiff State workers, and funds for the restoration of Louisiana’s Coastline are at stake.”
• The Keystone XL pipeline, which Biden canceled as another of his first acts, would have delivered approximately 830,000 barrels of oil a day to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. That oil could have done so much to check the skyrocketing gas prices that have been crushing American families for the last year. And that oil would have come from a trusted trading partner—Canada—which should be a much more appealing alternative than begging for more oil from OPEC as Biden ended up doing.
• The Line 5 pipeline in Michigan which Biden considered shutting down is crucial to the surrounding region of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania. Refineries and manufacturing plants in those states would lose not just an energy resource, but an important source of feedstock for the products they make. And, especially important in these cold winter months, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan would lose 65 percent of the propane its residents and businesses use for home-heating with absolutely no viable alternative sources in place.
• Oil and gas development in Alaska, which the Biden Administration has blocked, would provide access to an estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil. That’s more than reserves of entire countries from which we import oil like India, Egypt or Turkmenistan. That oil could be coming from Alaska, right here in the U.S., with all the economic and national security benefits that come with it, as well as much stronger protections for the environment than in those foreign nations.
• When the Biden Administration let a ban on hydraulic fracturing take hold in the Deleware River Basin that covers Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Delaware, he wasn’t just breaking a campaign promise he repeated over and over. As the President of the Marcellus Shale Coalition put it, “It may be a good day for those who seek higher energy prices for American consumers and a deeper dependence on foreign nations to fuel our economy, but this vote defies common sense, sound science, and is a grave blow to constitutionally protected private property rights.”

So, the facts are, the short-sighted and politicized actions by the President are absolutely costing jobs for those who work in and are supported by the energy industry. And, they absolutely create higher energy bills for hard-working American families trying to make ends meet. But, there are also hidden costs to us all, in every corner of this nation, as these policies chip away at our security, our energy reliability and prevent all Americans from having access to our abundant domestic energy resources. For more about these “costs” check out our TEA Factsheet.