, who has made reducing the use of fossil fuels central to his time in office, has accused the U.S. oil industry of not doing enough to pump out more oil, saying companies are sitting on thousands of unused permits and putting profits ahead of ramping up production.
“The rhetoric has changed to some degree" from the beginning of the administration through last fall,"but the policies have not,” said Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president of policy, economic and regulatory affairs for the American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying organization for the largest U.S. oil companies.
Industry experts say there are a range of issues that have held oil companies back from drilling more, aside from the federal bureaucracy. While U.S. oil production has been coming back after demand tumbled during the pandemic, major oil companies have curtailed investment in new projects amid pressure from investors to return more capital to shareholders instead in the form of dividend and stock buybacks.
Republicans have sought to blame Biden’s policies for consumer pain at the pump as they head into the midterm elections where voters say one of their top issues is rising inflation. The White House has been altered its messaging around gas prices to focus blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin, after prices surged even higher following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Biden’s decision to cut off Russian oil imports.
"This is really a problem for because they have declared war on the fossil fuel industry, they are trying everywhere to squeeze the fossil fuel industry and the fossil fuel industry has been on the defensive," said Aseem Prakash, director of the Center for Environmental Politics."Now the fossil fuel industry wants to hit back, this is their moment so give us more permits to approve the Keystone pipeline. But if they do this the climate people start screaming at them.
Instead, the administration has looked mostly outside U.S. borders to boost the supply of oil and drive down prices. Biden administration officials traveled to Saudi Arabia several weeks ago to discuss a number of issues, including oil production, the White House said Monday. Biden officials also made a recent trip to Venezuela, a major oil producer, where they discussed “a range of topics,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who declined to specify if oil was among those.
This is what a hostile government looks like
Hello… POTUS a little late for this, but we can help our selves in this situation!