After the U.S.-Russia summit, it seems the Biden administration is not only tone deaf to the plight of the American energy worker but views these men and women as both inconvenient and expendable on the international stage.
Today, Russia’s energy workers are gearing up to turn on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline with the Biden administration’s consent, while America’s energy producers, especially the smaller “independents,” are gearing up for the regulatory fight of their lives. This misaligned policy is not only unnecessary, but it is extremely damaging to two policy imperatives the Biden team purports to endorse – international stability and environmental progress.
America’s energy workers deserve better. They have been the linchpin of American prosperity and key to our nation’s world-leading environmental progress. Much of the industry’s success is the result of small to mid-size energy producers commonly referred to as “independents” that have perfected the process of safely and sustainably extracting the natural resources needed to fuel our modern lives.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the energy from these producers is the leading reason why the United States has achieved the largest absolute decline in carbon dioxide emissions among all countries since 2000. For an administration that defines its entire domestic economic outlook by low-emission futures and climate change leadership, this type of tangible progress should be embraced.
Unfortunately, our domestic oil and gas operators are under attack and left-wing environmental groups are already injecting shoddy scientific analysis into the public discourse in an attempt to arm the Biden administration with the tools needed to regulate them out of existence. While extreme, we’ve witnessed the weaponization of regulatory agencies before when the Obama-era death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach squeezed out politically unpopular technologies in the past. Ground zero for this approach is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Just last week, the New York Times published a hit piece written by an explicitly biased reporter referencing a leftist-funded study that denigrates small to mid-size oil and gas operators. While this study lacks technical context and relies on a distorted view of ongoing emission reductions trends, it is already being referenced by environmental organizations as proof of why EPA needs to act.
An unfortunate difference today is that some within the oil and gas industry – perhaps looking to score greenwashed political points or effectuate a degree of self-preservation – have joined the chorus of left-leaning groups and media activists ultimately calling for their own industry’s demise. It should not be lost on anyone that these same corporations with increasing overseas investments are fine to sit back and let the added costs of onerous regulations in the U.S. drive out their smaller, less-diversified competition.
The reality is that in order to launch a full-scale war against America’s fossil fuel industry, the Biden administration needs additional data. Left-leaning think tanks and activist groups willingly author studies to help bolster politically charged agendas. Government agencies like the EPA should be apolitical enough to reject questionable claims of science. This study and the favorable dissemination in the NYT would rather weaponize the government to push an agenda instead of advocating for an outcome rooted in sound analysis and respective of the balanced environmental directives Congress has actually assigned.
This approach may generate political benefit for the current leadership, but it will harm our domestic energy producers, increase the price of electricity and gas while doing little to improve the environment. It also creates tremendous doubt in our federal government.
Moreover, this approach is unnecessary. Through a combination of technological breakthroughs, the built-in incentive to not let natural gas – the very commodity being sold – escape into the atmosphere, and federal and state regulations already on the books, methane emissions from the oil and natural gas industry have declined 17% since 1990. Incredibly, these reductions were achieved while U.S. oil and gas operators became the top producers in the world.
But honest regulatory analysis revealed that advancing meaningful environmental progress while preventing expenditure of unnecessary costs, especially for purposes of reducing methane emissions, did not require the shuttering of businesses, curbing economic growth, banning the use of modern technologies or creating new layers of bureaucratic red tape. Rather such an outcome could be achieved by working alongside oil and gas operators to improve compliance with existing rules and ease the process of incorporating new technologies into existing infrastructure.
This balanced approach worked and despite constant mischaracterizations by mainstream press, cutting unnecessary regulations can and did lead to improved environmental outcomes. Importantly, America’s independent energy operators were viewed not as adversaries, but rather, as highly capable allies in this endeavor.
Mandy Gunasekara is an environmental lawyer, mother of two, and proud Mississippian. She previously served as the Chief of Staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.