Biden Further Cripples the U.S. Oil and Gas Industry

July 2, 2021

President Biden has made it clear that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a top priority to his climate agenda, with Congress voting Friday to restore Obama-era methane emissions standards that President Trump successfully rolled back under his administration. 

The Daily Caller reports on how smaller, independent oil and gas companies will be disproportionately impacted by the costs of these regulations, threatening their businesses:

“The rules under the Trump administration made sense,” Karr Ingham, petroleum economist and executive vice president of Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“It’s conceivable that the return to the Obama-era methane rule, or the implementation of new regulations, will be so burdensome they’ll put a lot of these smaller guys out of business,” Ingham said.

The Trump administration had implemented rules in September 2020 exempting smaller oil and gas wells from certain methane emissions regulations passed in 2016 under the Obama administration that were designed for larger operations. Small petroleum companies had lobbied for the rule change for years, citing the high regulatory burden of the Obama regulations, according to Open Secrets.

The oil and gas industry has faced extreme turmoil since the start of the pandemic and those that were able to stay afloat are now being even further attacked by President Biden’s orders. These regulations will inevitably put more oil and gas companies out of business and in turn, more American energy workers out of a job. Ed Longanecker, president of the Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association (TIPRO), told the Daily Caller, “The added expense of compliance with regulations can greatly impact the economic viability of oil and natural gas wells, and even the survival of many small businesses.”

The U.S. oil and gas industry is a vital part of our economy, workforce, and national security. To further cripple an industry that gives the U.S. such security is detached from the interests of the American people.