Blog

This week, Democrats in the House of Representatives will try to misdirect voters about the source of high energy prices. Rather than taking on the policies of the Biden administration which are the actual cause of more expensive energy, the House will take up legislation about a phantom cause: “price gouging.” The bill, H.R. 7688, is named the “Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act,” and it would give the President vast powers to set price controls to combat this imaginary...

Is now the right time to increase energy prices with a new tax on energy?

Despite the fact that inflation is the highest it’s been in forty years and the U.S. economy contracted in the first quarter of 2022, Republican Senators Kevin Cramer, Lindsey Graham, and Bill Cassidy apparently think so.  They’re plotting with Democrat Senators Joe Manchin, Chris Coons, and Sheldon Whitehouse (who’s never met an energy tax he didn’t like) to push for a new “carbon border adjustment”.

The American Energy Alliance urges all Senators to support the following motions to instruct conferees to the H.R. 4521 conference committee.

YES on Barrasso motion requiring the development of a new offshore leasing plan. The administration has taken no action to begin a new five-year leasing plan as required by law.

YES on Lee motion to discard extraneous green provisions passed by the House. These provisions are not relevant to a China competition bill and should not have been...

Americans can expect higher energy prices as U.S. electric utilities plan their biggest spending increases in decades to upgrade electric grids, preparing for increased demand from electric vehicles and making the transition to renewable energy. Utilities plan to spend tens of billions of dollars in the coming years to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, partly in response to state and federal mandates, and to replace infrastructure that cannot meet the needs of President Joe Biden’s energy...

On Friday, April 15, President Joe Biden announced 144,000 acres of the federal mineral estate opened for oil and gas leasing—just 0.00589 percent of the 2.46 billion acres the American people own . Along with this announcement, Biden increased the rents on leased land and the royalties companies must pay on every barrel of oil and every cubic foot of natural gas produced. Of course, those increases will raise the price of domestically produced oil and therefore gasoline, diesel, natural...

Last week, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) released stricter fuel economy standards  for automobiles, known as the Corporate Average Fuel Economy CAFE) Standards. The new CAFE standards require that the average new vehicle in the United States get 49 miles per gallon of gasoline by 2026. The new standards will require an increase in fuel efficiency of 8 percent annually for model years 2024 to 2025 and 10 percent annually for model year 2026. They will increase the estimated...

President Joe Biden plans to extend the availability of higher biofuels-blended gasoline  during the summer to lower gasoline costs and to reduce reliance on foreign energy sources. The measure will allow Americans to buy E15, a gasoline blend that contains 15 percent ethanol from June 1 to September 15. E15 is cheaper on average than gasoline but it is less energy efficient, requiring drivers to buy more fuel. The shift could result in a modest effect on gasoline prices at the pump given...

President Joe Biden is expected to call on Congress  to pass legislation enacting “use it or lose it” fines on wells that oil companies have leased from the federal government but have not used in years and “on acres of public lands that they are hoarding without producing…Companies that are producing from their leased acres and existing wells will not face higher fees.” The extra fees on federal leased land are on top of rents that the oil companies pay to hold the leases,...

Last week, President Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to increase domestic production of minerals used in making electric vehicles, such as nickel, lithium and cobalt. The president said that the country depended on unreliable foreign sources for many materials necessary for transitioning to the use of renewable energy and reports have stressed this for years. The irony of the situation is that in January, the Biden administration  revoked the federal leases for the Twin Metals mine...

Today the Biden administration announced it would “immediately increase supply by doing everything we can to encourage domestic production now.” While the Biden administration can change course, this would require a 180-degree change from their current approach.  

The Biden administration claims that “The fact is that there is nothing standing in the way of domestic oil production.” This is not true. According to the latest numbers from the Department of Interior, there are...