OPINION: The Biden Administration’s War on Fossil Fuel

Tim Stewart, president of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, says it wasn’t long ago that America had “global dominance” of the world’s energy economy. As he explained it in an interview with Rebecca Weber, CEO of the Association of Mature American Citizens, on her “Better For America” podcast, up until January 2021, when Joe Biden became president, “the United States was the producer to which OPEC and the other oil and gas producers in the world responded ... now we’re walking around, shaking a tin cup [and asking] the Saudis to please give us a little bit more oil.”

America’s expertise on energy production has been undermined. The Biden administration has replaced professionals “who have oil and gas experience in their portfolios with think-tank activists. And that’s why you see this headlong rush into an unproven energy policy which will ultimately cost everybody a lot more money.” Stewart pointed out that the Biden administration wasted no time in canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and suspending leases. “And now they’re coming down into our personal lives and saying, you can do this and you can’t do that. And it’s a frightening direction in which we’re going right now,” he said.

Stewart went on to explain that the administration has triggered an invasive war that would outlaw fossil fuels such as natural gas. For example, San Francisco is bent on phasing out natural-gas furnaces starting in 2027. 

“We don’t have the infrastructure in place and it won’t be in place for a long, long time,” Stewart noted. He said that despite the fact that the powers that be seek to portray fossil fuel as the enemy, “the reality is natural gas is probably the best bridge fuel you’ll ever get if you want to completely decarbonize.”

Stewart pointed out that the “Ninth Circuit Court recently overturned Berkeley, California’s ban on gas-stove infrastructure. They said you can’t do that. You don’t have the authority to do that. Which is encouraging to me because, if you can win in Berkeley, in the Ninth Circuit, which is the most notoriously liberal court there is, we can win across the country.”

Another [progressive] state, New York State, has also recently passed a statewide ban on natural gas and Stewart suggested that his association will get involved there as well. In fact, he said his Oil and Gas Association has established what he called, a “Hands Off My Stove Initiative. It’s “an option for people who don’t work for our industry, but who want to figure out how to do something. We’re gathering people from all across the country to help local groups fight these local initiatives. We’ll team people up with them to keep the communists out of our kitchens,” he explained.

 “I have never in my 30 years seen a more concentrated regulatory and legislative assault on the oil and gas industry like we have seen in the last 18 months. The Biden administration, I think, really is to blame. There is significant overreach right up front. And in doing so, they bought this issue of energy poverty and they put it on their own shoulders. That is the biggest issue and we’ve been pushing back on them over and over and over again. If I’m a senior living on a fixed income, there are some things I can’t control. Nor can I control the price of energy, and that is something that I have to have. And the administration has been very slow and frankly unresponsive and uncaring in terms of what their policies are actually creating. We’re being squeezed by a regulatory regime, which is frightening,” Stewart said.        

John Grimaldi writes for the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC), a senior-advocacy organization with 2.4 million members.