A report from the Institute of Energy Research (IER) found that the Biden administration intentionally made it more difficult to produce oil and gas in the United States.
“President Biden and Democrats have a plan for American energy: make it harder to produce and more expensive to purchase,” IER wrote last month. “Since Mr. Biden took office, his administration and its allies have taken over 200 actions deliberately designed to make it harder to produce energy here in America.”
The report begins its list on Biden’s first day in office when he canceled the Keystone XL pipeline.
Biden then “restricted domestic production by issuing a moratorium on all oil and natural gas leasing activities in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge” while restoring and expanding the “use of the government-created social cost of carbon metric to artificially increase the regulatory costs of energy production of fossil fuels when performing analyses, as well as artificially increase the so-called ‘benefits’ of decreasing production,” the report says.
On January 27, 2021, Biden released an executive order promoting the ending of “international financing of carbon-intensive fossil fuel-based energy while simultaneously advancing sustainable development and a green recovery.”
In March 2022, Biden announced his plans to sell one million barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) for six months.
Another 10 million barrels of oil from the SPR were sold in September 2022.
President of the Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association, Ed Longanecker, told The Center Square that Biden’s withdrawal of an estimated 250 million barrels from the SPR was “another dangerous example of putting politics over national security.”
“The fact that some will believe the decision to cancel contracts to refill the SPR is due to a newly discovered fiscal consciousness is both nonsensical and alarming,” Longanecker said. “Poorly conceived, albeit intentional energy policy results in higher costs for consumers, global emissions, and inflation, while putting our economy and energy security at risk.”
The last note on the report dates to March 7, 2024, when John Podesta began serving as Biden’s climate envoy.
American Faith reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently paused its implementation of a climate rule that requires some companies to disclose greenhouse gas emissions.
According to a summary of the rule, businesses were to report “climate-related risks.”
The move follows 25 Republican attorneys generals filing a lawsuit against the rule. The states argued that the SEC attempted to implement the rule without congressional approval.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, who led the lawsuit, said in a statement, “Today’s victory shuts down the most outrageous climate mandate for businesses since Biden took office. The SEC’s job is to protect people from fraud. It has no business slapping companies with extremist climate mandates. We are making it clear that Biden has to follow the law like everyone else.”