President Joe Biden’s efforts to stabilize the global oil market while simultaneously decreasing gas prices for drivers have baffled and infuriated some green energy activists.
Biden announced Thursday that the United States would release 180 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the next six months, use the revenue from the sales to refill the stockpile, and called on Congress to pass legislation fining oil companies with unused federal drilling permits or dormant wells on federally leased land. The president also utilized the Defense Production Act to surge domestic procurement of critical minerals the administration says are essential to achieving clean energy independence.
BIDEN: TAPPING US OIL RESERVES A ‘WARTIME BRIDGE’ TO THE FALL
Biden’s announcement came just days after the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Evergreen Action, Common Defense, Win Without War, Indivisible, Sierra Club, and a coalition of nearly 100 “climate, veteran, foreign policy, and progressive organizations” launched a campaign to pressure Biden and Democrats to make “swift investments in clean energy to reduce our dependence on foreign authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin and oil companies that are price-gouging Americans at the pump.”
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reaffirms that America must lead the world in a clean energy transition. Our dependence on fossil fuel empowers authoritarians like Vladimir Putin, rogue oil-producing nations, and price-gouging oil companies,” the group wrote in a statement. “For the sake of our national security and planet, we call on America’s leaders to take immediate action to invest in domestic clean energy jobs and end our dependence on fossil fuel.”
Meanwhile, a number of activists reacted to Biden’s announcement by claiming that the administration was rewarding the “greed” of oil companies.
Collin Rees, a spokesman for Oil Change International expressed frustration with Biden’s action, calling the decision a “small bandage on a gaping wound” in a statement.
“The fossil fuel industry’s greed is hurting working people at the pump, and we should tax those windfall profits and give relief directly to families in need — not count on indirect signals and the market to help when immediate aid is needed,” Rees wrote. “The solution must be a wartime mobilization to transform our energy system, not doubling down on a volatile fossil-fueled system driving the climate crisis, worsening conflict, and boosting economic inequality.”
“Releasing more oil from the strategic reserve won’t address the root cause of this high prices: Big Oil’s coordinated campaign to gouge Americans at the pump,” Fossil Free Media Director Jamie Henn added on Twitter. “A better solution would be to pass the windfall profits tax proposed in Congress, which guarantees immediate relief to Americans without undermining the administration’s climate goals. Big Oil should pay for the problem they’ve created.”
A better solution would be to pass the windfall profits tax proposed in Congress which guarantees immediate relief to Americans without undermining the administration s climate goals. Big Oil should pay for the problem they’ve created.
— Jamie Henn (@jamieclimate) March 31, 2022
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, herself one of the loudest climate advocacy voices in the Biden administration, addressed concerns on MSNBC Thursday night that it’s “so depressingly insane that we are here in 2022, and it’s like ‘drill baby, drill!'”
“I totally get it,” Granholm told host Chris Hayes when asked why he should not be “depressed” by Biden’s decision. “I think a lot of us came into this hoping that we would be focusing solely on clean energy solutions, renewable, making that transition, but we didn’t anticipate that Vladimir Putin would wage war on Ukraine and cause these markets to go out of control.”
Granholm stressed that Biden’s action presented a two-step solution.
“One is let’s increase supply right now because we’re on a wartime footing, and we want to reduce people’s pain at the pump and, you know, safeguard them against this incredible volatility,” she said. “But second, we have got to use this reason to become energy independent with clean energy. We don’t want to be relying upon fossil fuel markets that are incredibly volatile or from countries that don’t have our interests at heart, so ultimately, the best solution is to go clean.”
“We want to invest in renewables. We want to invest in the technologies that decarbonize the fossil fuel industry,” Granholm said. “That’s why the second part to become energy independent with clean energy is the medium to long term strategy.”
Biden’s National Economic Council Director Brian Deese made a similar commitment to the administration’s clean energy goals during Thursday’s White House press briefing.
“I want to be really clear,” he said. “The circumstances in global oil markets today and global energy markets today provide the clearest possible signal why the United States needs to do everything it can to accelerate toward energy security and true energy independence.”
Deese said that “the only way that we can ultimately do that is to reduce and eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels.”
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“We have a historic opportunity to do that,” he said. “We are wasting no time, and we are taking no — this is not causing us to do anything but move even more quickly in the steps that we can take.”
