Congressional Climate Warriors Confront Challenge of High Energy Prices

January 11, 2022

The Wall Street Journal editorializes on the problem of what happens when politicians supporting the Green New Deal get what they want. Last week, a collection of Democratic Members of Congress sent a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) complaining about the impact “that anticipated increases in heating and energy costs will have on our constituents this winter.”

Naturally, these Members of Congress failed to connect the dots to how their efforts to stop the production and transportation of energy sources like oil and natural gas have contributed to the problems facing their constituents. Instead, similar to the Biden administration, they tout conspiracy theories about market manipulation and profiteering. Yet, as PTF has documented, President Biden spent his first year in office manipulating markets to make energy exploration and development more difficult for American companies.

The Wall Street Journal writes, when it comes to energy prices, the simplest explanation is correct:

“We expect households that use natural gas as their primary space heating fuel,” the Energy Information Administration says, “will spend $746 this winter, 30% more than they spent last winter.”

Part of that is a forecast for colder weather, but there’s also basic economics. “The main reason wholesale prices of natural gas, crude oil, and petroleum products have risen,” the EIA says, “is that fuel demand has increased from recent lows faster than production.”

Yes, when demand rises faster than production, prices go up. That’s not market manipulation – that’s the marketplace. And when President Biden and his Democratic allies make it harder to produce energy on a scale high enough to meet demand, their constituents end up with higher utility bills. As The Wall Street Journal concludes:

… President Biden, encouraged by the signers of this letter, has made clear that U.S. fossil-fuel production must be phased out. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the PennEast Pipeline were both canceled even after beating opponents at the Supreme Court. Getting gas to Mr. Markey and Ms. Warren’s Massachusetts is so difficult that sometimes it comes into Boston Harbor on a tanker from Russia. And they wonder why heating prices are high.