Evidently $8 a gallon gas simply isn’t high enough for the Biden Administration’s EPA. Hot on the heels of the Supreme Court telling the EPA it can’t regulate carbon dioxide absent congressional authority to do so, the EPA is attacking drilling in the Permian Basin over ozone.
The Permian Basin, straddling Texas and New Mexico, is the world’s biggest oil field and accounts for over 40% of the nation’s petroleum production.
It is now in the regulatory crosshairs of the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency . . . not because of carbon dioxide, but due to ozone.
The Environmental Protection Agency is weighing labeling parts of the Permian Basin as violating federal air quality standards for ozone — a designation that would force state regulators to develop plans for cracking down on that smog-forming pollution. The move, outlined in a regulatory notice, could spur new permitting requirements and scrutiny of drilling operations.
Ozone levels in the basin have surpassed a federal standard “for the last several years — really since the fracking boom took off in the Permian,” said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians.
The conservation group formally petitioned EPA for the so-called non-attainment designation in March 2021 and, roughly six months later, warned the agency it intended to sue to force action. The designation “basically says you’ve got to clean up this mess or the consequences are going to get even more severe as far as restricting your ability to permit more pollution and more development,” he said.
So expect an industry that’s already taken it on the chin thanks to Flu Manchu lockdowns and Biden Administration policy to be further slammed during an energy crunch.
Oil prices sit consistently above $110 per barrel. Average gasoline prices in Texas have eclipsed $4.50. And natural gas prices in May were three times higher than in 2019.
Fossil fuel producers do not see a break in these high costs any time soon, according to a survey done by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
Uncertainty about their industry is as prolific as was their fossil fuel production before the pandemic.
Nearly half of respondents blamed labor shortages, inflation, and supply chain bottlenecks as the primary causes for oil and gas production concerns — each of which is an indirect consequence of government policy.
Responding to the coronavirus pandemic — a factor outside of their control — federal, state, and local governments shut down business operations across the nation: grounding air travel, closing everyday businesses, or putting strict constraints on ingress and egress of persons.
This sent a ripple effect throughout the global supply chain, creating a self-fulfilling disruption for both demand and supply. Fewer people traveling meant less demand for fuel. Less demand for fuel at first drove down the cost of oil to historic lows, but then led to less fuel production when the market adjusted. As travel demand recovered, the production side struggled, and continues to struggle, to catch up — playing into the high prices currently seen.
Another consequence of the shutdowns, unemployment skyrocketed both as a result of the closures themselves and the loss of business profits the lockdowns exacerbated. The oil and gas industry is still struggling to return to pre-pandemic levels of employment — employing 30,000 fewer workers than at the end of 2019.
How important is the Permian Basin for American energy production?
In July, the Permian Basin will produce roughly 60% of the oil barrels per day from of the seven most prolific U.S. basins, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA); 5.316 million BPD out of a total of 8.901 million.
In June, the Permian Basin is expected to generate 5.232 million BPD; the second most prolific area is expected to produce 1.152 million BPD.
The idea to wield ozone regulations against Permian Basin operations evidently came from environmental activist and regulator Joe Goffman.
Climate activists also want EPA to tighten ozone standards to indirectly regulate CO2 from fossil fuels. Joe Goffman, a champion of this idea, is leading EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation on an acting basis, and he’s in charge of ozone rules.
Mr. Goffman midwifed the Obama Clean Power Plan that had sought to conscript states into a force-fed green energy grid transition until the courts killed it. A 2014 article from E&E News described Mr. Goffman as the “U.S. EPA’s law whisperer. His specialty is teaching an old law to do new tricks.” How many more tricks does he have up his sleeve to keep gas prices high?
Just how high does the Biden Administration want to raise the price of gas?
Tags: Economics, EPA, fracking, gas prices, Joe Goffman, oil industry, Permian Basin, Regulation, Texas
High enough to ensure that we never, ever elect a Democrat to office again.
The Democrats are tied in with the Blackrock/Buffet types like you wouldn’t believe. Blackrock is positioning itself to profit from economic destruction of the current order; Buffett has been using them to block the pipelines that compete with his trains, and at the same time, Blackrock has been “influencing” the rail companies to cut back on the movement of key industrial products like urea and fertilizer.
They think they’re geniuses, but don’t realize that a.) what they’re doing is perfectly visible to “the rest of us”, and b.) when the blowout comes, they’re going to be on the hook for all of it. It won’t be pretty, either. Picture French Revolution-level amounts of “elite criticism” by the proles, which will likely include a lot of improvised gallows and guillotines put to use by mobs with torches and pitchforks.
These idiots are not all that bright. It’s just like with BidenCo. blowing through the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for no real strategic purpose, other than PR for the regime. I’m pretty sure that doing so was entirely illegal in the first place, but just like all the crap done under the previous Obama administration that was clearly illegal (carving up GM and screwing the stockholders, anyone…?), nobody cared to enforce those laws. We’re now a banana republic; if Trump had done what Biden did, with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, he’d have been impeached and likely successfully. You can’t have two different standards of law in a country, where one party can do as it likes ignoring law and regulation, while the other is held accountable.
I don’t think we’re going to come out of this era intact. I really don’t see that happening, and it hurts to watch. Primary guilty parties here? Literally, the Democratic Party, along with their effective Uniparty partners in the establishment GOP, which long since ceased being any sort of effective opposition to the Democrat organized crime bust-out of the United States government. It’s going on, right out in the open, and not a single person is doing anything effective to resist it or try and stop it. All of the DC “elite” are in on it, or there would be someone coming out and saying things like “People were paid to look the other way on how we fought in Afghanistan…”
I don’t know where this all ends. I can’t think of too many cases anywhere in history where corruption and malfeasance in office was this big, or this entrenched. It will end badly, because that’s all it can do. Gas prices are a deliberate outcome of deliberate choices made, and what is really galling is that instead of highlighting those choices as the cause, the media is gaslighting the public about the real causes of the price rise. Which is going to be felt throughout the economy as people cease buying and consuming, in order to afford gas…
The whole thing is criminal, utterly criminal. Of course, on the other hand, they did tell us what they were going to do, and nobody took them at all seriously. BidenCo. on gas prices during the election was exactly like the Nazis with the Jews; they told everyone that they were going to do it, and nobody took them seriously or thought through the consequences. Dumbf*cks. I still run into morons with Biden-Harris stickers on their cars that can’t quite figure things out, but are sure that somehow, Trump is responsible.
Kirk, it’s not that nobody believed them. Some didn’t, but many Democrat voters are getting exactly what they voted for. The smarter Dem voters are 100% in favor of pulling up the ladder of success behind them to keep those icky flyover state people from eating their lunch through hard work and/or creativity, while the less intelligent ones really, truly buy the climate alarmism, “anti-racist” racism and promises of getting something for “free”.
That was a fabulous comment, though it was unfortunate that it even had to be written, let alone comtemplated.
“The whole thing is criminal, utterly criminal….” says it all in a nutshell.
If I may be permitted just a few quibbles…(alas, I’m not terribly articulate or original):
“…High enough to ensure that we never, ever elect a Democrat to office again…”
Except that Biden wasn’t elected.
“..they did tell us what they were going to do, and nobody took them at all seriously…”
Except that Biden wasn’t elected.
“…nobody took them seriously or thought through the consequences…”
Except that Biden wasn’t elected.
The American people are smarter than that, but when the fix is in, being smart just isn’t good enough, I guess.
Still, gotta stay hopeful.
Thanks again for your terrific post.
OK.
The SCOTUS just slapped down the EPA for trying to regulate CO2 – a gross overreach beyond their Constitutional powers.
So now they want to REGULATE OXYGEN and shut down operations in the world’s and US’ largest oil and gas field….
At a time of unprecedented energy scarcity – when there will likely be millions Who die this Winter for lack of energy for heat and clean water.
Ozone is a natural molecule. One of two isotopes of oxygen.
I HOPE SCOTUS TAKE THIS UP ON AN ACCELERATED EMERGENCY BASIS
The EPA and the Department of Education are the two main reasons I think Nixon should have been termed a Democrat. Couple that with his courting of China, and we’ve got a twofer…
There are no Democratic or Republican Parties, once you get above the local level. They are the same thing, with a fraudulent Janus face in order to con the rubes.
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