Reps. Boebert and Roy Seek to Force a Vote to the House Floor on Reversing Biden’s Oil and Gas Executive Orders

April 22, 2021

Reps. Lauren Boebert and Chip Roy launched a discharge petition Wednesday to revoke Biden’s moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal lands and his decision to stop the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

FOX News reports:

“President Biden’s assault on American’s energy production is causing the skyrocketing gas prices that we’re seeing at the pump,” Boebert told Fox News in an interview on Wednesday. “Thousands have lost their jobs and tens of thousands will be losing their jobs. Meanwhile the rest of the world, they’re laughing at us as we purchase more energy from countries that hate our guts. I wanted to take a stand. We’ve got to stop putting hardworking Americans last.”

As we discussed in yesterday’s blog post Biden’s heavy-handed approach to energy policy is pushing our energy dependence onto foreign nations like China. As The New York Times reported, “The dilemma stems from an uncomfortable reality: China dominates the global supply chain for solar power, producing the vast majority of the materials and parts for solar panels that the United States relies on for clean energy.”

“If you wanted to design a more reckless and frankly stupid series of executive actions targeting our energy industry and undermining American people, I’d actually have a difficult time coming up with one that is more destructive than what Biden and company are doing,” Roy told Fox News in an interview. 

A discharge petition, if successful, can force a vote on the House floor to reverse President Biden’s oil and gas executive orders. The petition requires a majority of the members of Congress to sign on, so that means Reps. Boebert and Roy would need at least six Democrats to break ranks.

The lawmakers’ first targets are four Democrats in Texas who initially asked Biden to rescind his moratorium on oil and gas leasing on federal lands. “Now is not the time to jeopardize American jobs, or the critical tax and royalty revenues that federal leases generate for local, state, and federal government that need funds now,” Democratic Texas Reps. Lizzie Fletcher, Vicente Gonzalez, Henry Cuellar and Marc Veasey wrote in a letter to Biden in January.

The American Petroleum Institute projects a drilling ban on federal lands and waters extended through 2030 would result in 1 million job losses by 2022 with the biggest impact being felt in the states of Texas, Wyoming and New Mexico.

We hope lawmakers understand the ripple effects these overreach orders will have across the country. For energy-rich states like Texas, we urge members to vote on behalf of the interest of their constituents who will be feeling the consequences the hardest if these orders stay in place.