Any hopes you may have had that Joe Biden has seen the light on the energy crisis were doused earlier this week when the White House appeared poised to basically kill off the Willow project in Alaska. Fresh on the heels of that announcement, more bad news arrived. The federal government’s congressionally mandated offshore oil and gas leasing program expired last year. Despite federal laws requiring the White House to institute the next phase of the program, the best the Biden administration has managed thus far is a dubious draft plan that was published last July. But now we’re being told that they are still not ready to issue a new schedule and they will need at least the rest of the year to complete the work. (Institute for Energy Research)
President Biden’s oil and gas offshore lease plan is late and will be even later as the Interior Department argues it needs until December to finalize the plan. It told a court it needs the rest of the year to complete an analysis on the delayed five-year program, which will replace the expired 2017-2022 program.
There is currently no active offshore leasing program providing for new lease sales despite the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act mandating that the Secretary of the Interior ‘shall prepare’ this program to ‘best meet national energy needs.’ America’s energy future is on hold as the Biden Administration deliberates on how to comply with the law at the same time it is working to “end fossil fuels” as President Biden promised.
This isn’t some optional task that Joe Biden is allowed to ignore or do away with via executive order. The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act was established in 1953 and has continued in a bipartisan fashion for seventy years. By failing to complete this requirement, the President is literally ignoring and violating federal law.
When Joe Manchin objected to this latest delay, he pointed out another alarming factor. When the White House released its draft copy of the next schedule last July, it included three different options for the number of leases to be offered. One of those options was zero leases. That technically shouldn’t be legal either, but it appears that Joe Biden does not see federal laws as impediments to his promised plans to “end fossil fuels.”
As noted in the leaked report, these stalling maneuvers are part of a pattern established during this administration. During his first 19 months in office, Joe Biden leased fewer acres for offshore gas and oil production than any president before him. And the delays that the Interior Department is complaining about were caused by Joe Biden himself. As soon as he took office, one of his record number of executive orders placed all further leases on hold until they could be evaluated for any potential “climate change impacts.” The results have been both obvious and predictable.
Keep in mind that all of this is taking place during an ongoing energy crisis. While milder weather has allowed something of a comeback in American natural gas supplies overall, we’re still seeing regional shortages threatening the stability of the energy grid. These are being caused by a combination of infrastructure and supply chain issues simultaneous with a surge in demand from western Europe, where supplies have been impacted by the war in Ukraine and somebody blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines.
Utility companies are still warning of the possibility of rolling blackouts in both California and New England before winter is fully behind us. And through it all, we’re still dealing with a presidential administration that prioritizes climate change concerns over the ability of citizens to heat their homes or keep the lights on. Yet again, these are entirely self-inflicted wounds. Just four years ago the United States was the global leader in oil and natural gas production, having become a net energy exporter for the first time in modern history. And now we’re walking a tightrope, trying to prevent our own energy grid from collapsing.
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