Biden’s Plan Would Hurt Oil and Gas Jobs and Force American Energy Dependence on China

August 25, 2020

Tom Pyle, President of the American Energy Alliance, wrote an opinion piece in Harrisburg, PA’s Patriot-News Penn Live discussing the threat of a Joe Biden presidency.

In Dunmore and Darby earlier this summer, Biden spelled out his vision for a post-pandemic American economy if he’s elected president. With its heavy emphasis on moving us away from affordable and reliable energy – namely from natural gas, oil, and coal – the Biden energy plan is one that would leave Pennsylvanians jobless, America less energy secure, and more dependent on China.

The Biden plan is a one-two punch, with the first blow knocking out Pennsylvania’s oil and gas jobs. Though he is now trying to distance himself from his rhetoric during the Democratic primary, Biden has been very clear that he will seek to ban any new hydraulic fracturing and implement a carbon “pricing” scheme (that’s politician-speak for a national energy tax).

In a recent report, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute found, “Pennsylvania could lose more than 600,000 jobs and roughly $261 billion over the next five years if a national ban on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, were to be put in place.”

A fracking ban would also end Pennsylvania’s run of record-breaking energy production. Power the Future previously did a study on the positive effects of the fracking industry on Pennsylvania and found, “From 2007-2012, despite the great recession, the state experienced large job and wage growth, including: 259 percent increase of jobs in the oil and natural gas industry, 12 percent increase in average annual pay, and 36% growth in wages in the oil and natural gas industry.”

A big sell in Biden’s climate plan is that green jobs would become available for those forced from good paying energy jobs into unemployment by his energy plan.

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for May 2019, the average annual pay for gas and oil extraction workers was $96,600 – twice that of solar panel installers and more than 50 percent higher than the average salary for a wind turbine technician. Pennsylvania’s workers, unions included, would either be unemployed or forced to take massive pay cuts under Biden’s energy plan.

In a time of unprecedented economic uncertainty with unemployment at an all-time high, it’s dumbfounding that the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden would propose a plan that would force the constituents of his home state of Pennsylvania into unemployment or take at least a 50 percent pay cut. 

Instead of capitalizing on the world-class energy resources that Pennsylvania has been blessed with, Biden wants to coax our economy towards costlier, less reliable renewable energy whose market is largely controlled by China.

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Seventy percent of the world’s solar panels are made in China. Just one percent is made in the United States. … In other words, just as we finally rid ourselves of dependence on the Middle East for our energy, Biden wants to hand our energy security over to China.

A forced energy transition that bars American companies from selling reliable energy products to the American people and shifts that demand to China is anything but positive. The Biden plan would take jobs from blue collar Pennsylvanians and transfer them to China’s industrial pop-up cities while making energy more expensive for American energy consumers.