Biden’s energy shift questioned by state senators backing oil and gas
WASHINGTON —Republican Senators John Cornyn, of Texas, and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, criticized President Joe Biden’s plans to scale back oil and gas drilling on federal lands Friday as threatening the nation’s energy security while doing little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Since taking office, Biden has put a temporary pause on federal oil and gas leasing, which includes the Gulf of Mexico, while his administration considers longer-term measures to reduce fossil fuel production.
“The industry is under assault from people who claim to be ‘all of the above,’ ” Cornyn said of the Biden administration, during a talk at the IHS Markit CERA Week conference. “Really, they want to eliminate or restrict the very (energy) we need to keep our economies moving.”
Oil-rich states such as Texas and Alaska are likely to be hard hit by Biden’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the byproduct of burning oil, natural gas and coal. And moderate Republicans like Murkowski are considered critical to Biden’s bid to enact legislation to address climate change.
The pause in leasing has been particularly damaging on Alaska’s North Slope, where drillers only have a short window to conduct exploration each winter, when snow and ice protect the delicate permafrost, Murkowski said.
“We are not a manufacturing state,” she said. “You can do that in certain areas, but in order for manufacturing states to happen, you need the resource first and
that’s what states like Alaska and Texas provide.”
Biden has proposed reducing U.S. dependence on fossil fuels by shifting the economy toward electric vehicles and renewable energy such as wind turbines.
In the meantime, Republicans and some Democrats are concerned that reducing oil and gas production on federal lands and waters will force the United States to import increasing amounts of foreign oil and natural gas.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who was also speaking at CERAWeek, questioned where the United States would secure lithium and other rare earth minerals necessary to produce electric vehicles. The country has few of its own supplies of the minerals.