API Urges Biden Administration to Step Up Oil & Gas Leasing, Streamline Permitting Process

A famous novelist, possibly F. Scott Fitzgerald, once described the American Dream as consisting of a glorious past, an exciting future but a dreary present.

That thought came to mind when listening to the annual "State of American Energy" briefing January 10 from executives at the American Petroleum Institute (API) (Washington, D.C.), the oil and gas industry's largest and most powerful lobby group.

On January 10, speakers at the API breakfast and press availability continued to highlight the potential dangers of President Joe Biden's energy policies, albeit with a slightly harder edge than earlier years: "The Biden administration has locked up federal lands and waters to resource development," API President and Chief Executive Mike Sommer said. It "released the federally mandated offshore leasing program about 500 days late....and included only three lease sales through 2029. In fact, this year--for the first time--there will be no offshore lease sales."

"This isn't partisan," he continued. "President Obama's energy record wasn't perfect, but his administration offered 96 onshore leases during his first three years in office, compared to just 18 in the Biden administration. Just as yesterday's policies are felt today, today's will be felt tomorrow."

How to explain the fact that the U.S. is now the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas? Sommers said it was due to decisions made by prior administrations. Similarly, America's leading role in exporting LNG stemmed from Biden's predecessors. And the Biden administration's green-lighting of the controversial Willow oil and gas project in Alaska? API officials declined to address that.

The U.S. has achieved "significant energy advantage" despite the "significant policy headwinds" and "misguided policies" of the current administration, an API colleague, Dustin Meyer, API's senior vice president of policy, economy and regulatory , told reporters after the breakfast meeting.

Meyer and Sommers urged the administration to increase permitting for onshore and offshore oil and gas development, reduce permitting red tape that is impeding infrastructure development and return to the bipartisan approach to leasing that had been the case for four decades.

Meyer said the lengthy permitting delays for the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast pipelines "are two examples of a broken permitting process." In his address, Sommers also mentioned the Keystone XL pipeline as a third example where policy acted against U.S. energy interests.

"To maintain America's energy advantage going forward," the API chief continued, "policymakers must increase energy leasing in federal lands and waters, approve permits in a timely manner, and remove barriers to developing American energy. It takes too long to build energy infrastructure. Our country should not suffer the consequences of short-sighted policies that ignore energy realities."

One of those realities is the world's projected growth in energy demand, chiefly for oil and gas. Another is growing concern over global climate change.

Sommers said global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are trending down because power producers are switching from coal to natural gas around the world. Increasingly, the world is coming to rely on U.S. exports of LNG. He criticized news reports that the Biden administration is considering pausing permits of LNG export facilities.

"Exports of U.S. LNG are speeding the world's transition away from coal," he told reporters. "The environmental benefits of shipping U.S. LNG overseas have been tremendous. We have been exporting America's environmental progress to the world." It would be wrong to interrupt that because it would "send a chilling signal to future investment in the Gulf Coast region."

The API executives also said their call for permitting reform extended beyond the oil and gas industry. "Other energy projects like wind and solar can take four to six years to clear federal environmental reviews," Sommers said in his breakfast address. "These permitting delays could also impact emerging technologies like carbon capture and hydrogen--where our industry is leading in innovation. Projects of all types are snarled in red tape. Put simply--we can't unleash these technologies if we can't build them." Towards that end, API called on policymakers to "keep the lights on" by adopting a long-term outlook for the energy industry. The group's new "Lights on Energy" campaign aims to educate voters and policymakers on the fundamental truths around American energy and the path toward an affordable, reliable and cleaner future.