Over the summer, when gas prices were reaching their peak, House Democrats hauled oil company executives before a congressional committee to browbeat them for not producing enough.
We noted at the time that it was an embarrassing spectacle of two-faced politicking. After all, it has long been the policy of the Democratic Party to frustrate the expansion of the oil and gas industry wherever legally possible — for example, on federal lands and on the ocean floor. Democrats have also constantly ridiculed the idea that energy problems can be solved with a “Drill, baby, drill” approach to the problem. Why should anyone start believing them when they speak out of the other side of their mouths about increasing production?
Certainly, these Democrats’ rhetoric was incompatible with the Biden administration’s ongoing efforts to suppress oil and gas production on federal land, which, according to a new analysis, can only be described as epic and unprecedented.
According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Interior Department data, President Joe Biden has leased fewer acres of federal land for oil and gas production than any other president going all the way back to the Kennedy era.
Thanks mostly to the illegal refusal by his appointees to hold mandatory lease sales, Biden has allowed the lease of only about 130,000 federal acres for drilling in the last 19 months. In other words, back when Biden was struggling to make the phrase “Putin price hikes” stick, his administration was working actively to keep the price of gasoline high.
For reference, total oil and gas leases for the first 19 months of the Trump presidency came to 4.4 million acres. Barack Obama leased 7.25 million acres in the same period of his presidency. Bill Clinton leased 9.7 million. Jimmy Carter leased 11.8 million.
Although his actions are illegal, Biden is fulfilling a campaign promise that voters should have taken literally. He said he would end drilling on federal lands, and he wants to force a transition to so-called clean energy. How? By making traditional energy too expensive. Biden’s grasp of how ordinary people live is best exemplified by his recommendation that you purchase a $60,000 hybrid if you cannot come up with gas money.
Unfortunately, as California begs its residents not to charge their electric cars under pain of rolling blackouts, the public is figuring out that wind and solar energy are not feasible as main sources of generation capacity. Europe is currently learning the same lesson.
“Green” politicians in Europe were more than happy to get their gas from Russia so long as it meant they could avoid producing fossil fuels in their own countries. They literally laughed at former President Donald Trump’s warning that they were making themselves dependent on President Vladimir Putin. Now, Europeans are paying a steep price for their arrogance. Cut off from Russian gas supplies, Europeans are facing widespread shortages and cripplingly high energy prices.
The good news is that Americans do not need to share Europeans’ fate. Indeed, U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas could even help Europeans avoid the consequences of their own choices. But that happens only if the Biden administration stops dragging its feet and starts making much larger areas of public land available for drilling. Instead of playing a dishonest game of “hide the ball” with rhetoric about how many acres are already available, Biden should stop dragging his feet on issuing all the permits required to make full use of those leases.
To be sure, any oil or gas discovered today will not be available instantly. But oil and gas are bought and sold through futures contracts that take into account beliefs within the market about both short- and long-term supply. Moreover, the only way to be prepared for the future is to start now. So what is Biden waiting for?
Instead of making excuses, the Biden administration needs to start thinking about how to make both the United States and its European allies less dependent on despots for energy This will require a combination of oil and gas production on the one hand and expanded nuclear power on the other. Wind and solar will play a supplementary role at the edges until nuclear fusion becomes viable.
The Biden administration, which for the last 19 months has been part of the problem, has a chance now to change course and make itself part of the solution.
