The Biden administration has taken a “whole-government approach against the fossil fuel industry” making the nation less equipped to becoming energy independent, Jason Isaac from the Texas Public Policy Foundation told NTD’s “Capitol Report” on March 11.
While the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is “standing on the accelerator to zero emissions,” the Biden administration is “colluding with large financial institutions and banks to deny capital that’s necessary to increase production,” Isaac stated, referring in part to an August 2021 policy put in place by the Biden administration to stop banks from lending to overseas fossil fuel projects.
Despite President Joe Biden’s statement that thousands of permits have been approved for oil drilling, Isaac said that permits and leases do not equal production because oil producers have to face “other regulatory hurdles” held up within the “Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the EPA, because this administration is anti-fossil fuels, they are anti-American energy.”
Biden denied “holding back domestic energy production” at a March 8 press briefing, adding that oil producers have “9,000 [permits] to drill onshore that are already approved” but have chosen not to use them for production.
Isaac said the Biden administration needs to “embrace American energy and energy independence” so that markets will “start investing again in American energy production” and lower prices at the pump immediately.
Over the last two years major U.S. oil stocks have lagged behind the market as investors became reluctant to invest in fossil fuel stocks.
“Oil and gas companies do not want to drill more,” Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James, told CNN. “They are under pressure from the financial community to pay more dividends, to do more share buybacks.”
Government subsidies toward renewable energy such as wind and solar have further distorted the energy market, threatening the nation’s “energy reliability,” causing “blackouts” and increasing costs, Isaac said.
According to The Wall Street Journal, energy suppliers are having to add “large-scale batteries to store more intermittent power during peak periods after the sun falls and wind dies” as backup methods to generate electricity. However, because “storage technology is somewhat new” and “relatively expensive,” it remains a small fraction of the electricity market.
While the Biden administration has advocated a transition to “clean energy,” Isaac said that America has reduced harmful air pollution by “78 percent in the last 50 years.”
Isaac also added that government subsidies into “unreliable renewable energy” have driven a surge of foreign investments into U.S. windfarms.
By Tammy Hung
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