Biden Has Taken More Than 200 Actions Against Domestic Oil, New Report Says

From HeartlandDailyNews

By Bethany Blankley

President Joe Biden and his administration have taken over 200 actions against the U.S. oil and natural gas industry as energy prices have gone up, according to a new report.

“President Biden and Democrats have a plan for American energy: make it harder to produce and more expensive to purchase,” the Institute for Energy Research states in a new report. “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 analysis highlights actions Biden took on his first day in office, listing them chronologically through March of this year. The first act was canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, issuing a moratorium on all oil and natural gas leasing activities in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and revoking Trump administration executive orders that decreased regulations in order to expand domestic production.

Within a week of being in office, Biden issued additional moratoriums on new oil and gas leases on public lands or in offshore waters and imposed new regulations related to permitting and leasing practices, which were tied up in the courts for years. It was not until last month that a federal court upheld the first oil and natural gas lease sale on federal lands. Last December, the Fifth Circuit also ruled that Gulf lease sales must go forward.

Other actions ahead of the midterm elections include threatening to tax the oil and natural gas industry, blaming them for profiteering. Roughly six months before the general election, his administration has proposed $110 billion tax hikes on oil, natural gas and coal. In response, U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., led a coalition of 24 senators expressing “grave concern” about his “continued hostility towards American energy production.”

IER published the report after the latest action taken to increase the cost of U.S. oil production and cancel plans to restock the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The SPR has been depleted to roughly half of what it was when he first took office.

“President Biden had the chance to top up the SPR when prices were still low during the pandemic, but anti-oil-and-gas ideologues within the administration couldn’t bear to do anything that would help out producers when demand was low,” Kathleen Sgamma, president of Western Energy Alliance, told The Center Square. He then drained it “for political reasons and it’s long overdue to fill the SPR back up. Like many other politically driven decisions from this administration that distort energy markets, the government will have to spend more taxpayer money than if it had rational energy policies.”

Ed Longanecker, president of the Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association, told The Center Square that the Biden administration withdrawing approximately 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. 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.”

Daniel Turner, Founder and Executive Director for Power The Future, said instead of using American-produced oil to refill the SPR, Biden was “embracing insanity by putting the green agenda ahead of our families and our national security. Only in Joe Biden’s head does it make sense to lower costs by raising fees.” In light of Iran’s recent attacks against Israel, he said, “the world and our allies need a strong America that is fully utilizing our energy strength. Instead, the only things Joe Biden wants to strengthen is Iranian oil and Washington’s tax revenue.”

As the Biden administration imposes more fees on American oil producers, Iran’s oil exports reached $35 billion within the last 12 months, according to Iranian Labour News Agency. “Despite the reimposition of U.S. sanctions on Tehran in 2018, Chinese purchases of Iranian oil have allowed the country to maintain a positive trade balance,” Reuters reported. “Without oil exports, Iran would have registered a $16.8 billion trade deficit.”

U.S. House Republicans last month passed several bills and resolutions to strengthen the U.S. oil and natural gas industry, The Center Square reported. Only a handful of Democrats, largely from Texas, supported them.

Texas leads the U.S. in oil and natural gas production, having broken records in the last few years, The Center Square has reported. Because the majority of oil and natural gas is produced on private land and a bipartisan group of Texas elected officials and regulatory agencies are supportive of the industry, Texas has been able to achieve what most states have not.

Those in the Texas energy industry argue that, without their ingenuity and technological advancement, the U.S. would not be as energy independent as it is and prices would be higher. When the Russian-Ukrainian crisis hit, it was Texas LNG exports that provided a “lifeline” to European countries, a TIPRO analysis found.

“With so much uncertainty in the world, the need for reliable, responsibly produced energy from a stable trading partner has never been more crucial,” Texas Oil & Gas Association President Todd Staples said. “Texas is that trade partner. Our producers, pipelines, refineries, and exporters answer the call to alleviate the global energy crisis, made worse by war.”

He also argues that Texas’ production records “are not guaranteed. We cannot take for granted that this industry can continue to rewrite its record book in the face of federal policies blatantly designed to undermine progress. Delayed permits, canceled pipeline projects, closed and delayed federal leasing programs and incoherent regulations hurt American consumers and stifle our ability to deliver energy freedom and security around the world.”

Bethany Blankley is a contributor to The Center Square.

Originally published by The Center Square. Republished with permission.

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It’s Time To Abandon Reckless EV Mandates

Published on July 4, 2024

Todayville

From Canadians for Affordable Energy

Written By Dan McTeague

Already, billions of tax dollars have been handed out in subsidies to companies that have no accountability to the Canadian taxpayer. This experiment in societal re-engineering will disproportionately harm Canadian workers and families, especially those who live in rural communities.

And it will surely fail

Canada is not nearly ready for the wholesale adoption of electric vehicles (EVs).

That was the message of the letter I sent to every member of Parliament recently, urging them to drop the “Electric Vehicle Availability Standard” introduced by the Trudeau government late last year. That’s the policy that mandates that all new vehicles sold in Canada must be electric by 2035. There is no way, considering the economic, technological and infrastructural realities of our country — and our world — where this is possible.

Stubbornly attempting to achieve this goal would do serious damage to our economy, leaving Canadian taxpayers on the hook for generations to come. Already, billions of tax dollars have been handed out in subsidies to companies that have no accountability to the Canadian taxpayer. This experiment in societal re-engineering will disproportionately harm Canadian workers and families, especially those who live in rural communities.

And it will surely fail. In my letter I highlight a few of the central reasons why staying the course on EV mandates by 2035 is extremely reckless. Right off the bat, the technology is simply not there for electric vehicles to be a reliable source of transportation in Canada’s climate. The batteries cannot hold their charge in frigid temperatures. Forcing Canadians to rely on vehicles that can’t handle our winters is irresponsible and dangerous.

Electric vehicles’ cost is another issue. Right now, the EV market relies heavily on government subsidies. These subsidies can’t last forever. But without them EVs are prohibitively expensive. Even with them, the costs of maintaining an EV are high. Replacing a damaged battery, for example, can cost upwards of $20,000. Mandating that people buy vehicles they can’t afford to either purchase in the first place or maintain if they do buy them is political malpractice.

A fact long ignored by decision-makers in Ottawa is that our electrical grid isn’t ready for the excess demand that would come with widespread EV adoption. These mandates, paired with the government’s goal of fully decarbonizing the grid by 2035, put us on a collision course with the reality of unreliable power. A grid powered, not by reliable fossil fuels, but by spotty wind and solar energy would be further burdened with millions of cars relying exclusively on electricity.

Beyond the electricity itself, the EV mandates will require additional transmission and distribution capacity. But there are no signs any plan is in place to expand our transmission capacity to meet the 2035 target.

The sheer number of new charging stations required by wholesale adoption of EVs will strain our distribution networks. Natural Resources Canada projections show that Canada will need between 442,000 and 469,000 public charging ports by 2035. At the moment, we have roughly 28,000. And that doesn’t include the private charging stations people will need to install at home. Closing that gap in such a tight time frame is almost certainly impossible.

All of those considerations aside, at a fundamental level the government’s push for electric vehicles encroaches on the operation of the free market, all in the name of emissions reductions. The Canadian economy is founded on the market principle that the consumer drives the economy (no pun intended). Thousands of times over, it has been shown that if there is enough demand for a product, supply soon follows. In the case of EVs, however, the federal government is operating under the assumption that if you somehow create a supply, that will inspire a demand.

This hasn’t worked in any of the countries where it’s been attempted, which is why nations around the world have started to tap the brakes on EV mandates. Decision-makers in Ottawa need to follow suit and abandon these reckless and costly mandates. Let the market decide when EVs are ready for prime time. In other words, let Canadians decide.

Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy

Economy

Ottawa’s Regulatory Assault on the Extraction Sector and Its Impact on Investment

Published on July 4, 2024

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Kenneth P. Green

Business investment is a foundational requirement for a prosperous economy. It provides the resources to establish new companies, expand existing ones, and invest in new factories, machinery, and technologies. Business investment in Canada has declined markedly for over a decade. It is a major reason why Canadian living standards are stagnating in absolute terms and declining relative to many peer countries, particularly the United States.1

One factor behind declining business investment is the heavy regulatory burden imposed by the current federal government on the extraction sector, which includes: mining, quarrying, and oil and gas. Since 1990, this sector averaged 17.3 percent of total non-residential business investment, and reached as high as 28.7 percent of the total in 2013.2

The federal government has been particularly critical of the oil and gas sector. As an example of such sentiment, in a 2017 speech Prime Minister Trudeau said it would take time to “phase out” the oil sands, indicating the long-term goal of the federal government to eliminate the fossil fuel industry (Muzyka, 2017). The prime minister’s comments were followed by a number of new regulations that directly or indirectly targeted the oil and gas sector:

• In 2019, Bill C-69 amended and introduced federal acts to overhaul the governmental review process for approving major infrastructure projects (Parliament of Canada, 2018). The changes were heavily criticized for prolonging the already lengthy approval process, increasing uncertainty, and further politicizing the process (Green, 2019).

• In 2019, Bill C-48 changed regulations for vessels transporting oil to and from ports on British Columbia’s northern coast, effectively banning such shipments and thus limiting the ability of Canadian firms to export (Parliament of Canada, 2019).

• Indications from the federal government that a mandatory hard cap on GHG emissions would eventually be introduced for the oil and gas sector. In 2023, such a cap was introduced (Kane and Orland, 2023), excluding other GHG emitting sectors of the economy (Watson, 2022).

• In early 2023, the government announced new fuel regulations, which will further increase the cost of fuels beyond the carbon tax (ECCC, 2023).

• In late 2023, with limited consultation with industry or the provinces, the Trudeau government announced major new regulations for methane emissions in the oil and gas sector, which will almost inevitably raise costs and curtail production (Tasker, 2016).

The growing regulatory burden has a number of implications that impede or even prohibit oil and gas investment, by increasing costs and uncertainty, making it less attractive to invest in Canada. Both a 2022 survey of mining companies and a 2023 survey of petroleum companies identified the same three risks as inhibiting investment in Canadian provinces—uncertainty over disputed land claims, protected areas, and environmental regulations.3

It is also important to recognize that the Trudeau government introduced a carbon tax in 2016, which conceptually should replace regulations related to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions such as those listed previously rather than be an additional policy lever used to manage GHG emissions.4

The regulations discussed above, as well as direct decisions by the federal government had tangible effects on the oil and gas sector:

• In late 2016, the Northern Gateway pipeline running from northern Alberta to Kitimat, British Columbia was cancelled by the Trudeau government, further limiting the ability of firms in Alberta to get their products to export markets (Tasker, 2016).

• In 2017, TransCanada Corp. cancelled its $15.7 billion Energy East pipeline, which would have transported oil from Alberta to Saint John, New Brunswick. The project was cancelled in large measure due to changes in national policy regarding the approval of large infrastructure projects (Canadian Press, 2017).

• While the Trans Mountain pipeline from Edmonton to Burnaby, BC was approved, Kinder Morgan exited the project in 2018 due to uncertainties and questions about the economics of the project, forcing the Trudeau government to take the ownership. The cost of the project has since increased by more than four times the original estimate to $30.9 billion (Globe and Mail Editorial Board, 2023).

• In 2019, US-based Devon Energy announced plans to exit Canada’s oilsands to pursue more profitable opportunities in the United States (Healing, 2019).

• In 2020, Teck Resources abandoned its $20 billion Frontier oilsands mine in Alberta because of increasing regulatory uncertainty (Connolly, 2020).

• In 2020, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway decided not to invest $4 billion in Saguenay LNG, a liquified natural gas plant and pipeline, due to political and regulatory risks (CBC News, 2020).

The divestitures above are not an exhaustive list. Other companies including Norwegian Equinor (formerly Statoil), France’s TotalEnergies SE (formerly Total SA), US-based Murphy Oil, and ConocoPhillips have all reduced their investments in Canada’s oil and gas sector.

The government’s mounting regulations and hostilities towards the oil and gas sector did not go unnoticed outside of Canada. A 2018 article in The Economist listed the many failures to develop pipeline infrastructure in Canada to bring much-demanded oil and gas to market. Indeed, the piece called it a “three-ring circus” that risked “alienating foreign investors who are already pulling back from Canada” (Economist, 2018).

It is first important to acknowledge the overall decline in business investment in Canada since 2014. Overall, total non-residential business investment (inflation-adjusted) declined by 7.3 percent between 2014 and 2022.5, 6

The decline in business investment in the extractive sector (mining, quarrying, and oil and gas) is even more pronounced. Since 2014, business investment excluding residential structures and adjusted for inflation has declined from $101.9 billion to $49.7 billion in 2022, a reduction of 51.2 percent (figure 1).7

A similar decline in business investment of 52.1 percent is observed for conventional oil and gas, falling from $46.6 billion in 2014 to $22.3 billion in 2022 (inflation-adjusted) (figure 1). In percentage terms the decline in non-conventional oil extraction was even larger at 71.2 percent, falling from $37.3 billion in 2014 to $10.7 billion in 2022.8

Simply put, the declines in the extraction sector are larger than the total decline in overall non-residential business
investment between 2014 and 2022, indicating the magnitude of the overall effect of the decline in business investment in this sector.

The importance of business investment to the health of an economy and the rising living standards of citizens cannot be overstated. One of the major challenges facing Canadian prosperity are regulatory barriers, particularly in the oil and gas sector.

In that light, much of the regulatory burden added over the last eight years to the oil and gas sector should simply be eliminated. In some ways this is already being forced on the federal government through court decisions. For instance, in October of 2023, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that parts of Bill C-69 were unconstitutional as they infringed on areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction, requiring revisions to the Act (Dryden, 2023).

A careful and clear analysis is needed of the costs and benefits of the regulatory measures imposed on the oil and gas sector, including Bill C-48, the recent methane regulations, and the emissions cap. Based on this analysis, the regulatory measures should be adjusted to help improve the ability of Canada’s energy sector to attract and retain investment.