Biden Attacks the Oil and Gas Industry on All Fronts

January 28, 2021

President Biden’s first days in office have proven his determination to make his aggressive climate promises come to fruition.

After his first few hours in office, the oil and gas industry’s fears were confirmed when Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline permit. Immediately eliminating 10,000 American union jobs.

When asked about what he would say to the thousands of American workers who lost their jobs John Kerry, President Biden’s top environmental policy adviser said, “What President Biden wants to do is make sure that those folks have better choices… That they can be the people to go to work to make the solar panels.”

Forbes reports:

Given that, according to Bloomberg, the vast majority of solar panels used in the United States today are manufactured and assembled in China, with most of the rest made in either Japan or Canada, this does not seem to be any more viable an option than was the Obama administration’s advice to out-of-work coal workers to “learn to code.” These oilfield workers are American workers who need American jobs to support their families and keep their homes.

The new administration is skirting around the issues the President’s overreaching executive order have caused and promise job creation, yet a majority of these jobs will be overseas. American workers deserve better than a single executive order eliminating their livelihoods, and when pressed on answers the President throwing false promises of job creation at them. Even the number of jobs domestically that the administration states will be created would come nowhere near to the number of jobs lost or the pay those workers were making in the oil and gas industry.

The array of new regulations his Interior Department and Environmental Protection Agency will be developing in the coming months will no doubt eliminate thousands more jobs, including the methane regulations he refers to in his statement.

Biden’s moratorium on new leasing and permitting on federal lands and waters is only the first jab in his war on fracking. There is no doubt his appointees within the Department of Interior (DOI) which control the leasing and permitting processes will do everything in their power to slow or halt any company’s ability to work on leases they owned prior to the moratorium taking effect.

In an email, Tom Pyle, the President of the American Energy Alliance, said, “These actions are pointless. They will do nothing to affect climate change as competitors like China continue to ramp up the production and purchase of every form of energy they can, as fast as they can.” We couldn’t agree more.