Rarely has there been a more concerted effort by a country’s leadership to eliminate a source of national strength than the Biden administration’s war on fossil fuels.
As President Biden prepares to shuffle off the stage, he’s attempting to burnish his tarnished legacy with last-minute administrative actions.
To that end, he has just banned new offshore drilling along an enormous swath of the US coastline as part of — as a White House statement put it — “the most ambitious climate and conservation agenda in our country’s history.”
“Ambitious” is one word for it; “perverse” is a better one.
As the US has sprinted ahead the rest of the world economically, in part thanks to revolutionary advances in oil and gas production, the Biden administration has worked to fasten around our neck the same green albatross dragging down EU economies.
If you think Germany, an increasingly sclerotic economy enfeebled by self-imposed high energy costs, is a model, the Biden agenda should have a lot of appeal.
If, on the other hand, you are grateful that God gave the US cheap and abundant energy, and want to keep it that way, Biden can’t depart soon enough.
The offshore ban is an attempt by Biden, in the sad twilight of his presidency, to impose his policy going forward.
It’s not a trifling matter; the act affects 625 million acres, a greater area than the Louisiana Purchase, which clocked in at 530 million.
Biden is exploiting the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953.
The contention is that the law provides the president a power to ban oil and gas leasing from federal waters, without a subsequent president having the power to go back and revoke the prohibition.
In other words: “unilateral action for me, but not for thee.”
This would be a strange way for the law to work, although one federal judge upheld this interpretation during the first Trump administration.
Offshore drilling is an important part of our energy picture, accounting for 14% of our crude oil production.
Trump should enlist Congress to reverse the Biden ban.
We shouldn’t be denying ourselves any potential resources, since the story of recent years is technological advances opening up vistas no one would have predicted.
Ohio and Pennsylvania as natural-gas powerhouses? North Dakota as a major oil producer? Texas production increasing by more than 100% over the last decade?
These are the things that human ingenuity has wrought.
Thankfully, there are limits to how much the federal government can crimp oil and gas production.
Although Biden never talked about it, the country has actually been producing slightly more crude oil than it did at the peak during Trump’s first term.
Our fossil-fuel production has been a boon. Writing about how the US has outgrown other advanced economies, The Economist noted, “The shale-oil revolution has driven perhaps a tenth of its economic growth since the early 2000s.”
The booming production has drastically diminished the influence of OPEC, an achievement that would have been celebrated by both political parties at any time over the last 50 years.
Now, Trump, who has been building an exemplary energy team, is in position to double down on a national strength.
He’ll need to work to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act’s green subsidies that are distorting electricity markets; make it easier to build pipelines and associated infrastructure; loosen up on permitting restrictions; and roll back the archipelago of rules meant to phase out gas-powered cars and force electric vehicles on the public.
The incoming administration should also push back forcefully against the green ideology that Europe has embraced to its detriment, confident that — in pushing a common-sensical energy policy — the US is the one that is truly on the right side of history.
America is an oil and gas superpower.
It should be unapologetic about it, and leverage every last drop for our economic and geopolitical advantage.
Twitter: @RichLowry
This story originally appeared on NYPost
