Energy Security Is Not A Priority For The Biden Administration

How can you tell when a presidential administration does not place protecting the country’s energy security among its list of priorities? The Biden presidency has provided us with a year of examples now, starting with his Day 1 orders to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline and suspend the federal oil and gas leasing program.

Two key decisions last week – one by the administration, one by a federal court – provide further proof that nothing has changed during the intervening 12 months, and the lack of concern about creating and protecting energy security is not limited to oil and natural gas. The decision at the Department of Interior (DOI) to cancel long-held leases by Twin Metals Minnesota to mine for nickel, cobalt and copper proves Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s lack of concern extends to the expansion of domestic renewable energy sources as well.

Haaland’s consistent opposition to the oil and gas industry comes as no surprise. She has spent her entire adult life working to oppose the domestic industry, a feature of her resume that no doubt enhanced her chances to be appointed to her current job. If so, her actions in office certainly have not disappointed her boss, who promised repeatedly during his campaign in 2020 to end oil and gas development on federal lands and waters. The decision to cancel the permit for the Twin Metals Minnesota mine shows Haaland and the bureaucracy she controls also lack concern about securing adequate U.S. supplies and supply chains for the critical minerals that are integral to the expansion of renewables and electric vehicles as part of the “energy transition” she and the President claim to favor.

Like lithium, nickel, cobalt and copper are all fundamental building blocks for these “green” energy resources that have become the favored rent-seeking clients of this administration. With China and, to a lesser extent, Russia in dominant positions related to the supply chains for all of these minerals, President Biden promised last summer to mount a “whole of government approach” to ramping up U.S. production of them and disconnecting the country’s supply chains from those two often-adversarial international powers.

The need for these minerals by renewable industries is already massive and scheduled to rapidly rise in the coming years. As Tom Pyle, President of the Institute for Energy Research (IER) wrote last week, quoting a recent study by the International Energy Agency (IEA), “In climate-driven scenarios, mineral demand for use in EVs and battery storage is a major force, growing at least thirty times to 2040. Lithium sees the fastest growth, with demand growing by over 40 times in the SDS [Sustainable Development Scenario] by 2040, followed by graphite, cobalt and nickel (around 20-25 times). The expansion of electricity networks means that copper demand for power lines more than doubles over the same period.”

Twin Metals Minnesota has held these leases since 1966, and has invested $450 million on the project. But it has found itself and its efforts caught up in the competing political goals of successive presidencies. After the Obama DOI declined to renew its leases in 2016, the Trump administration reinstated them and renewed them for another 10 years. But Haaland’s DOI overturned the Trump ruling last week.

How is America supposed to secure a new, renewable energy future when federal leases to produce the minerals that are fundamental to the transition that were orginally approved 56 years ago are suddenly cancelled for obvious political reasons? Not only has the Biden administration made little or no discernible progress towards implementing its promised “whole of government approach” to secure these mineral supplies and supply chains, in this case it is actively working to avoid that outcome.

But back to oil and gas, and the federal leasing program for these minerals that are so fundamental to our society and economy. In a decision classified by CNN and other media outlets as a “win” for the Biden administration, a federal judge ruled last Thursday that the federal oil and gas lease sale conducted recently for 1.7 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico was invalid, in a lawsuit in which the government was ostensibly the defendant. The judge ruled that DOI had not conducted a proper environmental review prior to the sale.

It is key to note that the only reason why Haaland relented on Biden’s order suspending the federal leasing program and agreed to conduct this lease sale was due to a 2021 order by a different federal court. As CNN reports, “At the time, administration officials openly admitted that the sale was at odds with its climate goals and said its hands were tied.”

But their hands weren’t so tied that they couldn’t work to undermine their own lease sale by failing to ensure the proper environmental review had been conducted, apparently. Although this is a decision by a single Obama-appointed federal judge, no one expects the Biden administration to appeal his ruling to a higher court, given the decision’s consistency with the real goals of the Haaland DOI, which is to scuttle the leasing program entirely. That has been clear since Day 1.

This lease sale attracted almost $200 million in new investments by the oil and gas industry. Thus, in a single week, we see the Biden Administration working to cancel about $650 million in investments and thousand of jobs in both oil and gas and renewable energy in pursuit of its political goals.

The message from this President and his agencies could not be more clear: Companies looking to invest to enhance this country’s energy security in any form are not welcome here. With China engaged in constant saber-rattling over Taiwan and other matters and Vladimir Putin massing troops and military hardware along its border with Ukraine, it’s a dangerous message for this presidency to send.