How The Feds Are Causing High Gas Prices At The Pump

In February, Joe Biden’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) sought to implement a new policy that would have essentially required every proposed natural gas pipeline in the country account for all greenhouse gas emissions in order to obtain a permit. Such a rule would have effectively banned new pipelines, as the requirement would be nearly impossible to comply with. FERC recently suspended that policy action, but it could always be renewed.

It would seem Biden and his appointees are unaware of the impact their own actions have had in creating the crushing energy prices Americans are now experiencing. Or more likely, they fail to grasp the basic economic principle of supply and demand — increased energy supply would benefit Americans with lower prices; further restricting the energy supply will hurt us. This is really not all that complicated.

It’s important to remember that Biden promised to wage his war back in 2019 as a presidential candidate, when he said, “Look into my eyes…. I guarantee you, we are going to end fossil fuels.” It’s a promise he repeated again and again during the 2020 campaign. This would have better been a promise unkept, but he has been doing his best to keep it over the past 15 months as he and his appointees have mounted a whole-of-government war on domestic energy producers.

Upon assuming office last January, Biden acted quickly to end Trump’s energy independence policies, increasing the burden of emissions regulations, designating large areas of federal land as “national monuments” to reduce potential domestic energy production, suspending the federal oil and gas leasing program and cancelling the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Biden’s recent efforts to urge other producing nations like Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and even Iran to produce more oil have raised concerns among his party’s green supporters that, as Politico reported this week, he is somehow “recommitting to oil and gas.” But Justin Guay, director of global climate strategy at the environmental group Sunrise Project, said it’s not so much that as it is the fact that they, like so many other Americans, just can’t figure out what the administration’s strategy on energy really is. “It’s not even so much that I think the administration is recommitting to oil and gas, it’s that nobody can tell what they’re trying to do,” he said. “They’re not telling a coherent story.”

It’s a concern shared by many other Americans who are feeling the pain of this bureaucratic war at the gas pump. As West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, noted on Tuesday, America has the resources to produce plenty of energy, if only the government would get out of the way.

Of course, governments tend to be much better at getting in the way than getting out of it, and Biden is dead set on staying in the way of lower energy prices. How is he doing this? He has reduced transparency, making it more difficult for the public to understand and engage with agency actions. He also is seeking to reduce further pipeline development by exploiting statutory ambiguity. He wants to eliminate permitting reforms and empower bureaucrats to entangle energy projects in endless red tape. He has increased the cost of carbon calculation by several times the cost under Trump, and found more arcane ways to allow bureaucrats to increase regulations, regardless of whether they actually benefit Americans.

Last month, Biden’s EPA proposed new vehicle standards that take a reasonable idea to absurd lengths. Truckers like clean air as much as the rest of us, but there is a point at which the costs of compliance will damage this critical industry.

As part of his whole of government war on fossil fuels, Biden in late 2021 put forth a nominee to the Federal Reserve who has called oil and gas “a dying industry.” Fortunately, that nomination died in the Senate after Manchin said he would oppose it. He appointed noted anti-oil and gas activists to be his Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Interior and Director of the Bureau of Land Management.

All these actions and many more have happened over just 15 months. If Mr. Biden continues to wage this war on oil and gas across the remaining 33 months of his term in office, the damage to America’s energy security will take years to reverse and repair.

The President alternates between claiming he “can’t do much” about high gasoline prices, blaming the high prices on Putin and various other culprits (this week it’s Texas Governor Greg Abbott), and promising to “work like the devil” to stop their continued rise. The reality is that there are plenty of things he could do to remove the government handcuffs from the industry and allow it to increase supply, thus reducing America’s growing dependence on foreign oil. But of course, all the things he could do involve reversing his own actions in office. Things like renewing the cross-border permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, an action Manchin advocated while in Canada Tuesday.

Do this President and his appointees possess the intellectual honesty to quit blaming Putin, Gov. Abbott, American companies, COVID-19 and Americans who drive gasoline-powered vehicles, and take responsibility for the damaging impacts of their own actions? It seems unlikely, but we can always hope. The best cure for high gas prices is more supply on the market. With so many other oil-producing nations running out of spare producing capacity, the best present way to raise supply would be for Biden to end this war on America’s energy producers.