President Joe Biden sent a clear message to U.S. oil and gas companies on Tuesday after banning the import of Russian oil, natural gas, and coal.
“Let me say this to the oil and gas companies and to the finance firms that back them: We understand that Putin’s war against the people of Ukraine is causing prices to rise,” the president said after announcing the ban at the White House. “But it’s no excuse to exercise excessive price increases or padding profits or any kind of effort to exploit this situation or American consumers.”
“Russia’s aggression is costing us all, and this is no time for profit-carrying or price-gouging,” he continued. “I want to be clear about what we will not tolerate, but I also want to acknowledge those firms and oil and gas industries that are pulling out of Russia and joining the other businesses that are leading by example.”
The president also defended his administration’s clean energy policies, specifically an executive order he signed in January 2021 blocking new drilling permits on federal lands, which some critics claim are hindering domestic energy production.
BIDEN ANNOUNCES RUSSIAN OIL BAN, BLAMES PUTIN FOR SURGING PRICES
“It’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production. That’s simply not true,” he said. “Even amid the pandemic, companies in the United States pumped more oil during my first year in office than they did during my predecessor’s first year. We’re approaching record levels of oil and gas production in the United States, and we’re on track to set a record oil production next year in the United States.”
Biden further claimed that “90% of onshore oil production takes place on land that isn’t owned by the federal government, and on the remaining 10% that occurred on the land, the oil and gas industry has millions of acres they’ve leased.”
“They have 9,000 permits to drill now that can be drilled out yesterday, last week, last year. They have 9,000 to drill onshore that are already approved. So let me be clear. Let me be clear. They are not using them for production. Now, that’s their decision. These are the facts. We should be honest about the facts,” the president continued.
Biden’s comments continue a line rolled out by White House press secretary Jen Psaki and other top administration officials in recent days questioning why U.S. energy companies aren’t drilling on more permitted lands. Companies have withheld new drilling investments for years to boost investor bottom lines, and some industry executives have bristled at the administration’s suggestions.
Hess CEO John Hess told attendees at the CERAWeek conference in Houston on Monday that “the focus really should be on energy security, and oil and gas have a vital role to play in the global economy,” adding that “oil and gas are needed for decades to come, and the key challenge to oil and gas is investment.”
Exxon CEO Darren Woods added that “global energy markets have been rocked, and people everywhere are worrying about the availability and the affordability of energy.”
John Kerry, Biden’s special envoy for climate, offered a similar viewpoint and suggested that “the volatility of price, and with supply and demand, is something we’re going to live with for a little while here in the midst of this.”
Ryan Lance, CEO of fossil fuel giant ConocoPhillips, heartily discounted Biden’s Tuesday comments about domestic oil companies as a “talking point that’s not very helpful.”
“They just don’t understand the complexity of the business,” Lance told Bloomberg, adding that oil companies don’t set consumer prices. “We sell into the market. We’re market takers.”
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You can watch Biden’s remarks in full below.
