Don’t FERC With U.S. Energy Needs

This piece was originally published in Townhall on January 5, 2023.

In September, 2022, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that consumer electric bills rose 15.8 percent year-over-year, the largest increase since 1981. As winter descends on the northeast, utility companies are trying to prepare customers for extreme spikes in energy rates. And while it’s easy to open your monthly bill and curse the public utility that mailed it, the truth is, many of these price hikes are the result of bad ideas and policy coming out of Washington, D.C.

Then-candidate Joe Biden proclaimed on the campaign trail, “I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuels.” This is one promise he is committed to keeping, it appears. His administration has throttled oil production by reducing acreage available for drilling, slowing timelines for drilling permit approvals, and essentially stopping lease sales. Most notoriously, Biden killed the Keystone XL Pipeline project, which would have moved up to 830,000 barrels of crude oil daily to the U.S. refineries from Canada.   

The Biden administration is even working to politicize otherwise non-political federal agencies. For example, under the Biden administration, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has been transformed from an agency “that regulates the transmission and wholesale sale of electricity and natural gas in interstate commerce and regulates the transportation of oil by pipeline in interstate commerce” to a policy shop focused on completely ending natural gas transportation. 

The full article can be found here.