On Wednesday June 15th, as the Federal Reserve was busy raising interest rates, President Joe Biden was busy writing letters demanding that American oil companies explain why they were not putting more gas on the market and urging them to pump more.
It is reported, biden wrote a letter to the including exxon mobil, chevron, bp U.S. companies, shell oil company, phillips 66 company in the United States, marathon, valero, seven oil companies in the United States, its more gas to the market as soon as possible to ease oil prices rise, of course also to ease his falling popularity.
The national average for gasoline is more than $5 a gallon, and broader U.S. inflation is heating up.Biden, who came into office promising to reduce America’s dependence on fossil fuels, is now pressing oil companies to ramp up production before the midterm elections.After all, aside from exxonMobil making more money than God this year, Biden has tried a lot of things for oil prices, from releasing strategic oil reserves to imposing a UK-style windfall profits tax on the oil and gas industry to bowing to a trip to the Middle East to meet with the Saudi crown prince, but nothing seems to be working.
That afternoon, the American Petroleum Institute (API), which represents the nation’s largest oil companies, wrote back to Biden saying there was “nothing they could do”
The API then went on to list 10 steps Biden could take to ease energy bottlenecks and lower oil and gas prices:
- Remove development restrictions on Federal lands and waters: THE U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) should promptly develop a 5-year plan for the Outer Continental Shelf and issue fair terms for onshore leases on a quarterly basis as required. In addition, the DEPARTMENT of the Interior should resume canceled sales and valid leases on federal lands and waters.
- Designating critical energy infrastructure projects: Congress shall authorize critical energy infrastructure projects to support the production, processing, and transmission of energy that are of vital national interest and will be entitled to a streamlined review and permitting process of no more than one year.
- Adjust THE EPA’s permitting process: The government should revise the NEPA process to establish uniform review standards, limit review time to two years, and reduce bureaucratic procedures in terms of the size and scope of applications submitted.
- Accelerate LNG exports and approve pending LNG applications: Congress should amend the Natural Gas Act so that the Department of Energy (DOE) simplifies a single approval process for all U.S. LNG projects.In addition, the Department of Energy should approve pending LNG applications to enable the United States to provide reliable energy to Allies overseas.
- Unleashing investment and access to capital: The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should reconsider its overly onerous and ineffective climate disclosure proposals to ensure open capital markets, with access based on each company’s merits, rather than restrictions based on the government’s preferred allocation of investments.
- Remove barriers that create supply chain bottlenecks: Eliminate tariffs on steel imports from U.S. Allies, because steel is an important part of energy production, transportation, and refining.The government should accelerate efforts to ease congestion at ports in order to facilitate the delivery and installation of equipment needed by the energy sector.
- Advance low-carbon energy tax provisions: Congress should expand and extend the carbon capture, use, and storage development tax credit and create new tax credits for hydrogen production from all sources.
- Protect competition for the use of refining technology: The government should ensure that future federal agency rulemaking continues to allow U.S. refineries to use existing critical process technologies to produce fuels for the global energy market.
- End permit Obstruction for natural Gas Projects: The FEDERAL Energy Regulatory Commission should cease efforts to exceed its licensing authority under the Natural Gas Act, consider public needs, and pay attention to the direct impacts of the construction and operation of natural gas projects.
- Advancing the energy workforce of the future: Congress and the administration should support the training and education of a diverse workforce by increasing funding for work-based learning and advancing STEM programs to develop the skills needed to build and operate oil, gas, and other energy infrastructure.
The question is whether the Biden administration will respond to any of these.