http://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-halts-oil-gas-leases-as-oil-prices-skyrocket-at-home
By Amanda Prestigiacomo
The Daily Wire
February 24, 2022
As gas prices skyrocket, the Biden administration announced this week that they’re indefinitely delaying new oil and gas drilling on federal land and other energy-related actions following a federal court ruling that blocks the administration from using their steep “social cost of carbon” estimate.
U.S. District Judge James Cain of the Western District of Louisiana “blocked federal agencies from using an estimate known as the ‘social cost of carbon’ to assess pollution from carbon emissions by energy production and other industrial sources,” MarketWatch explained. “The decision blocked the Biden administration from using a higher estimate for the damage that each additional ton of greenhouse gas pollution causes society.”
“President Joe Biden on his first day in office restored the climate cost estimate to about $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions, after President Donald Trump had reduced the figure to $7 or less per ton,” the report noted. “Trump’s estimate included only damages felt in the U.S. versus the global harm previously used by President Barack Obama.”
Wyoming Senator John Barrasso (R) slammed the Biden administration for continuing “to defy the courts and the law” by halting oil drilling on public lands.
“Even in the face of a global energy crisis, historic inflation and skyrocketing gasoline prices, the Biden administration continues to crush U.S. energy production,” Barrasso blasted Biden.
Oil prices topped $100 a barrel for the first time in eight years on Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported, adding that “the commodity is set to squeeze American households, push up inflation, dent the economic recovery and create a new headache for the Federal Reserve as it moves to raise interest rates.”
“Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, traded above $100 per barrel Thursday morning,” the report continued. “Futures for West Texas Intermediate, the main grade of U.S. crude, topped $96 per barrel late Wednesday, putting them up 28% this year and 52% over the past 12 months. The benchmark, which briefly had a value less than zero after crashing in spring 2020 as the pandemic unfolded, is now at its highest level since 2014.”
President Biden gave a speech Wednesday telling Americans to buckle up for coming economic hardship, namely high gas prices, likely to result from sanctions against Russia.
“As we respond, my administration is using every tool at our disposal to protect American businesses and consumers from rising prices at the pump,” Biden said, The Daily Wire reported. “As I said last week, defending freedom will have costs for us as well, and here at home. We need to be honest about that.”
“But as we will do — but as we do this, I’m going to take robust action to make sure the pain of our sanctions is targeted at the Russian economy, not ours,” the president continued. “We are closely monitoring energy supplies for any disruption. We’re executing a plan in coordination with major oil-producing consumers and producers toward a collective investment to secure stability and global energy supplies.”
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence
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