After Youy Cost So Much Pain Then Again You Are Not Tp Blame
Fact Check
Republicans Wrongly Blame Biden for Rising Gas Prices
They have pointed to the Biden administration'southward policies on the Keystone XL pipeline and sure oil and gas leases, which accept had little impact on prices.
WASHINGTON — As gas prices hit a loftier this week, top Republican lawmakers took to the airwaves and the floors of Congress with misleading claims that pinned the arraign on President Biden and his energy policies.
Mr. Biden warned that his ban on imports of Russian oil, gas and coal, announced on Tuesday every bit a response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, would cause gas prices to ascent further. High costs are expected to last as long equally the confrontation does.
While Republican lawmakers supported the ban, they asserted that the pain at the pump long preceded the state of war in Ukraine. Gas cost hikes, they said, were the result of Mr. Biden's cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, the temporary halt on new drilling leases on public lands and the surrendering of "free energy independence" — all incorrect assertions.
Here's a fact bank check of their claims.
What Was Said
"This administration wants to ramp upwardly energy imports from Iran and Venezuela. That is the globe'south largest country sponsor of terror and a thuggish South America dictator, respectively. They would rather buy from these people than buy from Texas, Alaska and Pennsylvania."
— Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, in a oral communication on Tuesday
"Democrats want to arraign surging prices on Russia. But the truth is, their out-of-bear upon policies are why we are here in the first identify. Remember what happened on Day 1 with one-political party dominion? The president canceled the Keystone pipeline, and and then he stopped new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters."
— Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, in a speech on Tuesday
"In the four years of the Trump-Pence administration, we achieved energy independence for the kickoff time in 70 years. We were a net exporter of energy. But from very early, with killing the Keystone pipeline, taking federal lands off the list for exploration, sidelining leases for oil and natural gas — once again, earlier Ukraine ever happened, nosotros saw rising gasoline prices."
— Sometime Vice President Mike Pence in an interview on Fox Business organisation on Tuesday
These claims are misleading. The primary reason for rising gas prices over the past yr is the coronavirus pandemic and its disruptions to global supply and demand.
"Covid changed the game, not President Biden," said Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum assay for GasBuddy, which tracks gasoline prices. "U.S. oil production fell in the terminal eight months of President Trump's tenure. Is that his fault? No."
"The pandemic brought the states to our knees," Mr. De Haan added.
In the early on months of 2020, when the virus took hold, demand for oil dried up and prices plummeted, with the benchmark toll for crude oil in the United States falling to negative $37.63 that Apr. In response, producers in the U.s.a. and around the world began decreasing output.
Equally pandemic restrictions loosened worldwide and economies recovered, demand outpaced supply. That was "mostly attributable" to the decision by OPEC Plus, an alliance of oil-producing countries that controls almost half the world'south supply, to limit increases in production, according to the U.Southward. Free energy Information Administration. Domestic product also remains below prepandemic levels, every bit upper-case letter spending declined and investors remained reluctant to provide financing to the oil industry.
Russia'due south invasion of Ukraine has only compounded the issues.
"When yous throw a war on top of this, this is perhaps the worst escalation you tin can have of this," said Abhiram Rajendran, the caput of oil market inquiry at Energy Intelligence, an energy information company. "You're literally pouring gasoline on full general inflationary pressure level."
These factors are largely out of Mr. Biden'due south control, experts agreed, though they said he had not exactly sent positive signals to the oil and gas industry and its investors past vowing to reduce emissions and fossil fuel reliance.
Mr. De Haan said the Biden administration was "conspicuously less friendly" to the manufacture, which may have indirectly affected investor attitudes. Just overall, he said, that opinion has played a "very, very small role pushing gas prices up."
Paradigm
Mr. Rajendran said the Biden assistants had emphasized climate change bug while paying lip service to energy security.
"In that location has been a pretty stark miscalculation of the amount of supply nosotros would demand to go along free energy prices at affordable levels," he said. "Information technology was taken for granted. There was likewise much focus on the free energy transition."
But presidents, Mr. Rajendran said, "have very piffling bear on on brusk-term supply."
"The key relationship to watch is between companies and investors," he said.
It is true that the Biden administration is in talks with Venezuela and Iran over their oil supplies. Merely the administration is also urging American companies to ramp up production — to the dismay of climate alter activists and contrary to Republican lawmakers' suggestions that the White Business firm is intent on handcuffing domestic producers.
Speaking before the National Petroleum Council in December, Jennifer M. Granholm, the energy secretary, told oil companies to "delight take reward of the leases that you take, hire workers, get your rig count up."
The notion that the The states gained "energy independence" under Mr. Trump, and reversed grade under Mr. Biden, is also misleading.
Even before Mr. Trump took office, the United states of america had been projected to become a net free energy exporter in the 2020s "because favorable geology and technological developments result in the production of oil and natural gas at lower costs," according to the Energy Information Administration.
The state became a net exporter of petroleum in 2020, the first time since at least 1949. That remained the case in 2021. It became a net exporter of natural gas in 2022 and remains so today, with exports reaching record levels in 2021.
The term "energy independence" can too advise that the Us did not rely at all on imports. That, too, is untrue. In 2020, the Usa withal imported 7.9 million barrels of crude oil and other petroleum products a day.
Moreover, the specific policies cited past Republican lawmakers as prove of Mr. Biden'southward supposed "state of war on American energy" take had little affect on ascension gas prices.
The Keystone XL pipeline, which would take expanded an existing system transporting oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast, has been a political and environmental battlefield since its conception in 2008. The Obama assistants denied the company behind it, TransCanada, a construction permit in 2015. The Trump administration approved the permit in 2017, merely the projection stalled in the face of litigation. By the time Mr. Biden rescinded its let on his offset day in office, just 8 percent of it had been congenital.
Even if Mr. Biden had greenlighted the project and TransCanada, now known as TC Free energy, had won its courtroom battles, it is unlikely that the pipeline would have been operational today given that the company estimated in March 2022 that information technology would have entered into service in 2023. And "even if it were completed overnight, there'south no capacity for oil to exist put into this pipeline," Mr. De Haan said, pointing to supply chain issues and labor shortages that continue to bear on American and Canadian oil and gas producers.
Absent the Keystone Twoscore pipeline, crude oil imports from Canada have nonetheless increased by lxx percent since 2008, transported by other pipelines and track. The Trump administration itself told PolitiFact in 2022 that the pipeline'due south impact on prices at the pump "would be minimal."
The claims about oil and gas leases are even more incorrect.
Though Mr. Biden temporarily halted new drilling leases on federal lands in January 2021, a federal judge blocked that motility last June. In its starting time year, the Biden administration actually approved 34 percent more of these permits than the Trump administration did in its get-go twelvemonth, according to federal information compiled by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.
"None of these permits are relevant to product right at present," Mr. Rajendran said. "These permits are for product three, iv years downwardly the line. If they had approved 10 times as many permits, nosotros would accept the same product issues."
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/09/us/politics/fact-check-republicans-biden-gas.html
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