It is well known, and ignored by the Biden White House, that the United States can produce abundant oil and gas if only President Joe Biden would remove his own restrictions. An executive order to resume fossil fuel production on federal lands would be a clear step toward replacing Russian oil and gas now that the U.S. government has imposed an oil embargo in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
However, the Biden administration is reluctant to resume domestic production because this would anger the Green New Deal crowd, to which Biden is beholden. There is another way, however. The U.S. can reduce greenhouse gases, revive its energy industry, and cut the flow of money to Vladimir Putin’s war machine using a technology called carbon capture.
NET Power has been operating a natural gas-fueled power plant in La Porte, Texas, for the last few years that does not emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Its technology uses carbon dioxide to spin turbines and then stores it underground. The company is starting to sell and license power plants based on this technology.
Exxon Mobil has begun developing its own carbon capture operation along the Houston Ship Channel. It would use natural gas to produce carbon dioxide, which would then be stored, and hydrogen, which would be used as a clean-burning fuel. Even Elon Musk is getting into the carbon capture business as a way to combat climate change and to produce rocket fuel for his launch operations in Boca Chica, Texas.
Musk, by the way, has called for an increase in oil and gas production — remarkable for a man who sells electric cars.
The Biden administration, by announcing a three-part initiative that would cut off Russian oil and gas, unleash the production of American oil and gas, and promote carbon capture, would kill several birds with one stone. Russia would have far less funding to fuel its invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. would see a decrease in the price of energy, hence a decrease in inflation. The U.S. would showcase an emerging technology that could decrease greenhouse emissions without having to strangle the fossil fuel industry.
Indeed, with Germany now backtracking on its own war on fossil fuels, carbon capture power plants would be just the technology it needs to create abundant energy without dependence on Russia for natural gas via the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Countries in Europe would be able to ramp up drilling and fracking without having to increase greenhouse gas emissions. European countries would be able to buy power plants from NET and carbon capture technology from Exxon Mobil. Musk would be able to sell his carbon capture technology once it is developed. American industry and workers would benefit.
Putin’s Russia would, in short order, run out of money to buy munitions and other war materials for the invasion of Ukraine. Either he would have to give up and backtrack, or, more likely, people around him would be obliged to do it for him.
The only impediments to such a policy change are political. Green New Dealers such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, take a dim view of carbon capture, even though it could be an important part of a solution to climate change. One suspects that the real goal is to destroy the fossil fuel industry, regardless of climate change or the environment. Oil and gas companies have been a target of the Left since the Arab oil embargo of the early 1970s.
Still, if the Biden administration wants to execute good policy — which, by the way, would help blunt the red-wave midterm elections that are coming — it will do the right thing and ignore progressive Democrats.
Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration titled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond, and, most recently, Why is America Going Back to the Moon? He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.
