A mixed bag at best — that’s how to describe President Joe Biden’s approach to American oil and natural gas production. Too often, any step forward by the administration is accompanied by two steps backward, whether it’s restricting access off our shores or on federal land. It’s certainly no way to manage U.S. energy policy.
But it’s not too late to change course. Given our global population, which the United Nations expects to grow by 20% over the next few decades, we need an all-of-American-energy strategy. That means more energy sources to meet projected growth in demand — not less. More wind, more solar, more of everything, including oil and natural gas, which provide 70% of America’s energy today and are projected to lead well into the future.
Biden’s one-step-forward-two-steps-back approach was illustrated in December’s offshore oil and natural gas developments. Lease Sale 261 in the Gulf of Mexico on the Outer Continental Shelf was good, generating more than $382 million in high bids. But prior to the sale, the administration finalized the smallest five-year offshore leasing program in history — and then boasted about that fact on the Interior Department’s website, where the details were posted roughly 500 days late.
As a result of this tardy and subpar plan, the administration has zero offshore lease sales scheduled through December, making 2024 the first year without a sale since former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. This could spell trouble, given that more than 20% of America’s oil production has come from the Outer Continental Shelf since 1996.
Lease Sale 261 in the Gulf might not have even taken place if the Biden administration had its way. The sale, originally planned under the Trump administration, was canceled by Biden officials — only to be required by Congress in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Even then, Lease Sale 261 had to navigate choppy waters, churned by last-minute and unlawful administration maneuvers. The eleventh-hour moves were nixed by federal courts, and the sale occurred on Dec. 20. Though it took acts by Congress and the federal judiciary to get the administration to hold the sale, America’s energy companies view it as progress.
On the other hand, there’s little to cheer about in the newly finalized federal offshore leasing program for 2024-29. Though offshore energy is critical for America’s energy future, the administration’s scrawny five-year program could bite us a decade or more down the road, when that production eventually comes online — and when growing demand, predicted by the Biden administration itself, begs for a more robust offshore program.
It’s fair to ask whether single sales in 2025, 2027, and 2029 will be enough to meet that demand. It’s also right to be concerned that the administration’s reluctance to provide leasing opportunities, offshore and onshore, could lead to supply shortfalls even sooner.
To avoid such an outcome, Washington can take several steps. Primary among them is giving U.S. energy companies the necessary access to public resources. Yes, there’s more oil and natural gas production on private lands than federal, but that federal production is essential for a complete energy picture.
Second, we need infrastructure to support increased production — more oil and natural gas pipelines, which today can take longer to approve than earning a college degree. Federal permitting needs to be overhauled to streamline oversight on infrastructure projects. This goes for transmission lines, too, as well as pipelines to carry captured carbon dioxide to safe storage, away from our air and water, and hydrogen pipelines. We also need timely federal review of liquefied natural gas projects to aid allies while generating significant economic benefits here at home.
Finally, Washington needs to change its overall approach to oil and natural gas from a problem to be solved to an opportunity to seize. Policymakers should acknowledge oil and natural gas as strategic American assets that secure our future security and economic prosperity. That means ending the mixed messaging that has come from Washington since 2021.
Make no mistake: Washington’s current policy path, marked by consistent incoherence, could squander America’s hard-earned energy advantage, which was built on presidential decisions made decades ago to access more American oil and natural gas and helped make the United States a history-making global leader.
Securing America’s energy future is neither complicated nor out of reach. The solutions rest beneath our feet, requiring only a thoughtful, realistic strategy to harness them.
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Holly Hopkins is vice president of Upstream Policy at the American Petroleum Institute.
