Energy is booming, so why aren’t politicians bragging about it?
The best-kept secret in American politics today: Almost every kind of energy is booming.
Oil, natural gas, renewables - production of nearly every major source of energy has recently touched all-time highs. In fact, production of each has roughly doubled since 2000.
You’d think someone (President Biden, maybe? Oil-state Republicans?) would be shouting these milestones from the rooftops. But in an election year, this good economic news has become inconvenient for both political parties.
As inflation cools and consumer confidence rebounds, Republicans have pivoted to an old standby: Biden’s alleged war on energy, fossil fuels in particular. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (RTenn.) tweeted Monday that “Joe Biden has destroyed U.S. energy independence.” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and others have echoed the theme in making the case for the return of Donald Trump, who allegedly oversaw much heartier fossil-fuel production.
These politicians desperately need to update their talking points.
While U.S. crude oil production plummeted early in the pandemic and took time to recover, field production has reached new highs in the past few months, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports. In September and October (the most recent months for which data is available), U.S. oil producers were pumping 13.2 to 13.3 million barrels per day, exceeding the pre-pandemic peak of 13 million in late 2019 under Trump.
To put this in perspective, the United States is producing more oil than any other country in history.
Likewise, U.S. natural gas production has topped prior records.
The term “energy independence” is squishy, as commodity markets are global and will probably never be fully shielded from shocks abroad. But if it means “exporting more than we import” - as seemed to be the case when Trump was in office - then we’ve met that threshold many times over. We’ve been a net exporter of crude oil and petroleum products for two years, the longest stretch on record.
We have likewise been exporting ................................................................................................... Rick Christie .............................................................................................. Tony Doris
THE PALM BEACH POST EDITORIAL BOARD mission is to articulate the issues of the day, advocate for policies for the betterment of the community and encourage a civil and robust exchange of ideas. The Board consists of Executive Editor Rick Christie, Editorial Page Editor Tony Doris and Editorial Writer Douglas C. Lyons. more natural gas than we import since 2017.
Industry groups don’t talk much about these numbers, perhaps because it’s helpful to maintain the narrative that oil and gas companies are over-regulated and under-subsidized.
Democrats don’t like talking about these things, either. After all, highlighting the rising production of fossil fuels under Biden’s tenure might anger the climate-minded left-wing base, which (understandably) wants to “keep it in the ground.”
Additionally, some reasons behind the U.S. oil boom are not exactly great. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and coordinated production cuts in OPEC Plus countries have pushed global oil prices high enough that U.S. shale-oil producers can deliver the stronger returns their investors demand, and so they are pumping more oil.
“High prices have played a meaningful part in record crude production by simply making the economics work out for drillers,” says Ryan Cummings, a visiting economics Ph.D. student at Stanford University who’s been tracking energy markets. “Which of course isn’t great for the economy as a whole and inflation but does help employ more individuals out in oil country.”
Then there’s renewables. Solar and wind production have also reached record highs in the past couple of years. So have biofuel sources such as ethanol (though those don’t necessarily help climate efforts).
Growth in clean-electricity generation is a longer-term trend driven largely by technological improvements that have improved solar’s and wind’s costcompetitiveness. But recent policy changes, such Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, have also accelerated development.
The same forces are boosting battery development, which is helping solve intermittency problems caused by relying on wind or solar when the weather doesn’t cooperate. The Energy Information Administration recently forecast that U.S. battery storage capacity will nearly double this year alone.
The places benefiting from the renewable boom are disproportionately red states, such as Texas, yet conservative politicians remain reluctant to talk up these achievements. “Green energy” is still politically coded as lefty, even when it makes plenty of conservatives rich.
Bragging about expanded renewables can even be complicated for Democrats.
After all, voters in Rust Belt states might worry about unionized manufacturing jobs being siphoned off to southern right-to-work states, where new battery and electric-vehicle plants have been announced. In West Virginia, big investments in clean energy and battery production might not be enough to overcome resentment about the decline of coal. In fact, state senators there are pushing legislation to raise taxes on wind turbines.
Voters might assume that any growth in renewable production hurts other energy industries, as well as the jobs in those industries. In the long run, this might be true but it clearly hasn’t been lately - given that, again, almost everything is booming simultaneously, except coal and nuclear.
If Democrats got a little less squeamish about touting gains in oil, perhaps they could make the case for Biden as a president of “both-and” rather than “either-or.”
Catherine Rampell is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group.