In the Pipeline

The Biden-Harris administration is considering further restricting oil development in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve (NPR-A), the nation’s largest swath of public land. The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will be soliciting public comment  on whether to expand or designate new “special areas” in the 23-million-acre reserve. The move could extend the areas of the NPR-A that are mostly off limits to drillers and stymie new exploration for oil in the western...

President Biden ended his reelection campaign on Sunday, July 21, under mounting pressure from Democrats following his poorly received debate performance. By endorsing Harris, he has positioned her as the frontrunner to succeed him. However, there is still some degree of uncertainty looming as Democrats hurriedly work to assemble a new 2024 ticket before the party’s convention on August 19-22 in Chicago.  

Harris' stance on energy, both during her tenure as a senator and as a candidate...

The Biden administration plans to award General Motors and Chrysler-parent Stellantis nearly $1.1 billion in grants to convert existing car manufacturing plants to build electric vehicles and components. The Department of Energy (DOE) announced $1.7 billion  in planned grants to help fund the conversion of 11 “at risk” plants in eight states to enable the production of 1 million electric vehicles annually, help retain 15,000 existing jobs, and create 3,000 new positions. The plants are...

On July 5, Biden’s Interior Department blocked 28 million acres of federal land (D-1 lands) in the state of Alaska from any mining or oil and gas development, which removes an area the size of the state of Pennsylvania from resource development. The Biden administration also blocked  a 211-mile gravel road, the Ambler Access Road, that would have connected mining districts in west-central Alaska to a highway that runs through the middle of the state. The mines are rich in copper and cobalt...

A federal judge halted President Joe Biden’s temporary moratorium on new licenses for exports of US liquefied natural gas (LNG). U.S. District Judge James D. Cain Jr. in Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction  in a lawsuit filed by 16 states, including Louisiana, Alaska, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming, which argued Biden violated the U.S. Constitution and other federal laws by halting licenses in January to assess their impact on climate change. Under Biden’s direction, the...

Two lawsuits have been recently filed against the Biden administration over lost leases on Alaska’s North Slope. A coalition of North Slope local and regional governments, tribal governments and Native corporations has sued the Biden administration in the U.S. District Court in Anchorage for prohibitive environmental protections President Biden placed on the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A). And, the state of Alaska has filed suit  in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to recover...

A recent survey by McKinsey & Co. found that almost half of American electric vehicle (EV) owners are considering going back to internal combustion engine cars, i.e. gasoline or diesel vehicles. Forty-six percent of survey respondents said they were likely to purchase a gas-powered vehicle for their next car purchase. The top three reasons behind the shift are the lack of charging infrastructure, high cost of ownership and the complexityof long-distance trips. Globally, 29 percent  of EV...

Joe Biden and his Democrats have a plan for American energy: make it harder to produce and more expensive to purchase. Since Biden took office, his administration and Congressional Democrats have taken over 225 actions deliberately designed to make it harder to produce energy here in America.  A list of those actions appears below. A PDF of the list is available to download here.

On January 20, 2021, 

1. Besides canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, 
2. President Biden restricted...

Biden’s $7.5 billion EV charging stations program, which promised half a million installations, still has over 499,990 to go after three years. President Biden signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in November 2021, allocating $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging, of which $5 billion is dedicated to building a network of chargers along major highways, called the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program. Just seven electric-vehicle charging stations  have begun operating...

A coalition of environmental groups has filed a legal petition with the federal government to evaluate how the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) contributes to climate change and to begin phasing the 800-mile line out of existence. The government first authorized  the pipeline right-of-way across federal land in the 1970s and the pipeline has been operating successfully since then. Environmentalists opposed the pipeline in the 1970’s, arguing it would disrupt caribou and cause other...