Imagine that — leaders of industry are unhappy with the United States president because he virtually brought the industry to a standstill with the single swipe of a pen?
We never had to worry about that with former President Donald Trump, because he was too busy creating millions of skilled-labor jobs in the oil, gas, fracking and other important energy sectors. President Joe Biden, on the other hand, is doing everything he can to bury those industries deep into the ground and kill off as many American jobs as possible.
Because why not? Those workers can just “learn to code” or “build solar panels,” right? C’mon, man!
Reuters has the story:
U.S. oil industry and labor representatives were on the hot seat on Thursday as the administration of President Joe Biden launched a formal review of the federal drilling program to weigh its value to taxpayers against its environmental costs.
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Biden froze new drilling lease auctions in January as one of his first moves in the White House to pave the way for the review, triggering a backlash from the oil and gas industry which warned it would cost jobs and hurt the economy.
The pause is widely seen as a first step to fulfilling Biden’s campaign promise of a permanent ban on new oil leasing on federal lands and waters to fight global warming. His administration complains that half the 26 million acres of federal land currently under lease for drilling are not producing, generating little for public coffers, while the rest are contributing to climate change.
“The Trump administration offered vast swaths of our public lands and waters for drilling, prioritizing fossil fuel development above all other uses on public lands and waters,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said at a virtual public forum that kicked off the administration’s formal review of the program.
“While some corporations profited, taxpayers were shortchanged, and voices of many Americans went unheard,” she said.
Labor and industry representatives at the public forum urged against adopting any drastic reforms to the program.
“We must ask if an outright ban on federal leases is the best first step without addressing the downstream job impacts that provide employment opportunities,” Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, said.
Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs for the American Petroleum Institute, said the industry was willing to adopt technologies to reduce its climate footprint while keeping petroleum flowing.
“We recognize as an industry we can do more to address the risks of climate change,” he told a panel of Interior officials.
The United States has not reformed federal drilling royalty rates or minimum bids for decades, which critics say has depressed taxpayer returns and made it easy for speculators to amass large amounts of acreage on the cheap.
Biden is very obviously being pressured by the radical in his party to completely scrap American energy as we know it. It won’t be long before it’s all said and done, and thousands more American workers are standing in the bread line with hopes of feeding their families.
ARTICLE SOURCE : thefederalistpapers.org
