By Katy Grimes, California Globe
The first week in December 2018, the United States exported more oil than we imported, for the first time in nearly 70 years. This is known as energy independence. And it happened not because of the previous 50 years of dubious federal “energy programs” heavily regulating oil and gas, while promoting alternative energy, but despite them.
This took place under then-President Donald Trump, who said, “The year 2019 marked the first time in 67 years that American annual gross energy exports exceeded gross energy imports.”
“Then President Donald Trump took office and announced a radical departure from 50 years of received energy ‘wisdom,’” Investors.com explained. “In a speech to the Energy Department months after taking office, he said that for decades leaders peddled the myth of energy scarcity. Most of it is self-imposed, he said. What the country needs, he said, isn’t ‘alternative’ energy, or new austerity measures. It’s a government that ‘promotes energy development.’”
Which is the exact opposite of what the Biden administration is doing right now, resulting in driving up oil and gas prices to unaffordable levels for many in the nation.
Trump listed actions he was taking to lift federal impediments to energy production during his administration (partial list):
- The United States was the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world
- Natural gas production reached a record high of 34.9 quads in 2019, following record-high production in both 2018 and 2017
- The United States was a net natural gas exporter for three consecutive years and had an export capacity of nearly 10 billion cubic feet per day
- Withdrew from the unfair, one-sided Paris Climate Agreement
- Canceled the previous administration’s Clean Power Plan, and replaced it with the new Affordable Clean Energy rule
- Approved the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines
- Opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska to oil and gas leasing
- Repealed the last administration’s Federal Coal Leasing Moratorium, which prohibited coal leasing on Federal lands
- There is more HERE
And it worked. The Trump administration said the average American family saved $2,500 a year in lower electric bills and lower prices at the gas pump.
Since last year, my winter gas heating bill jumped nearly 50%, and we keep our daytime temperature below 65 degrees.
What energy independence means to the United States is affordable, reliable oil, natural gas, coal and fuel, which translates into affordable gas prices at the pump, affordable home heating costs, and affordable electricity.
Energy independence isn’t complicated: It merely “requires government to get out of the way so that oil companies can get at the vast supplies of good old oil and gas right under U.S. soil,” said Investors.com.
The Institute for Energy Research said we can “thank the oil and gas industry and its use of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling for that milestone as production in those industries increased a combined 11 percent in 2019. Total U.S. energy production increased by 5.7 percent in 2019 while U.S. energy demand decreased by 0.9 percent.”
“Joe Biden destroyed that in the first few days of office,” Victoria Taft explained at PJ Media Tuesday. “Biden closed the Keystone Pipeline and threw thousands of people out of work, declared the country would cut emissions by 50% by 2030 forcing the use of more expensive so-called ‘green’ energy, halted drilling in Alaska’s plentiful ANWR reserves, and just last week, as Americans were confronted with near $5.00 a gallon gas, he stopped all drilling on federal reserves. And now Russia has invaded Ukraine in a war that is over energy in large part.”
Biden’s policies have only helped the Russians, Saudis, and Iran, who greatly benefit now on the backs of Americans. With Russia invading Ukraine, rather than continuing to purchase oil from the Russians as we are still doing , Biden should be firing up the Keystone Pipeline, encouraging more coal production, and imploring (or ordering) the state of California to resume all of its natural gas production. We need all-of-the-above energy production.
Here in California, our gas prices have surpassed $5.00 per gallon throughout, and in some parts of the state, gas has reached $7.00 per gallon.
This hurts the working classes and the poor the most, which seems like an oxymoron given that Democrats claim they are the Party which cares about the poor and the working classes. What Democrats are instead doing to those they “care about” is forcing them to make financial choices between paying for gas for their cars and heat for their homes, and other things they need. Between inflation and energy and gas costs, most people are feeling a severe economic pinch – like a 40% increase in household costs between food and fuel increases.
“For many parts of the world, fossil fuels are still vital and will be for the next few decades, because they are the only means to lift people out of the smoke and darkness of energy poverty,” Bjorn Lomborg first wrote in 2013, and still reiterates. “This is not just about powering stoves and refrigerators to improve billions of lives but about powering agriculture and industry that will improve lives.”
California has ample petroleum resources. Powering California reports the state has accessible oil and natural gas resources that range from surface deposits of crude oil in places like the La Brea Tar Pits and along the Ventura and Santa Barbara coastline to oil and gas formations over 14,000 feet deep.
When Trump was President, California produced more than 200 million cubic feet of natural gas in 2017 used for heating and cooking in homes and businesses and to generate electricity.
Institute for Energy Research said: Despite the major push for renewable energy by environmentalists, fossil fuels still produce the majority of the energy that we consume today. Renewable energy’s share of the 2019 U.S. energy consumption market has only grown by 4 percentage points in 62 years, despite costing the taxpayer billions of dollars in subsidies.
As the Globe reported in 2020, California is rich in natural resources which once powered the state: natural gas deposits in the Monterey Shale formation; geothermal energy, abundant rivers and waterways such as the San Joaquin River Delta and hydroelectric dams; the Pacific coastline; 85 million acres of wildlands with 17 million of those used as commercial timberland; mines and mineral resources, vast farming and agricultural lands, and hunting and fishing.
But California politicians and political appointed agency officials, under pressure from radical environmental organizations and lobbyists, decided to ignore the energy producing natural resources, and instead move to an all-electric grid, and the only approved “renewable energy:” solar and wind energy.
Remember when all of the public transit buses in California touted “Clean Natural Gas?”
Michael Shellenberger, best-selling author of “Apocalypse Never,” explains: “California’s bet on renewables, & its shunning of natural gas & nuclear, is directly responsible for the state’s blackouts and high electricity prices,” and warned about the Biden-Harris plan.
Adding to our exceedingly high electricity and heating costs, our gas costs only appear to be going up, unless the Biden administration decides to stop acting like a member of the EU.
Lomborg adds, “The developed world needs a smarter approach toward cleaner fuels. The United States has been showing the way. Hydraulic fracturing has produced an abundance of inexpensive natural gas, leading to a shift away from coal in electricity production. Because burning natural gas emits half the carbon dioxide of coal.”
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