U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has temporarily suspended oil and gas permitting on federal lands and waters in the latest of a series of rapid-fire orders aimed at fighting climate change and tamping down the U.S. fossil fuel industry.
The order appeared to be a first step in delivering on newly sworn-in Biden’s campaign pledge to permanently ban new drilling on federal acreage.
Federal leases account for close to 25% of the nation’s crude oil output, making them a big contributor to energy supply but also to America’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump had sought to maximize production of oil, gas, and coal on federal acreage, and routinely downplayed threats from global warming.
The suspension was welcomed by environmentalists but derided by the oil and gas industry, which is struggling to secure a future under a new administration that has vowed to make countering global warming a top priority.
The 60-day pause strips Interior Department agencies and bureaus from their authority to issue drilling leases or permits while the administration reviews the legal and policy implications of the federal minerals leasing program, according to a Department of Interior memo. The order does not limit existing operations, it said.
Shares of U.S. shale producers with federal lands exposure fell following the news on Thursday.
EOG Resources Inc and Cimarex Energy Co closed down 8.6%, Devon Energy Corp fell 7.9% and Occidental Petroleum Corp closed down 6.4% on the New York Stock Exchange.
“This is a frack ban,” Anne Bradbury, chief executive of the drilling trade group American Exploration & Production Council, said in an interview. “Even just for 60 days, it’s a really aggressive move.”
Many of the largest onshore drilling companies had stockpiled permits here in anticipation of a change in federal policy ahead of Biden’s election, insulating them from a ban.
The order came close on the heels of a raft of other executive actions aimed at fighting climate change, including re-engaging the United States in the Paris climate accord and canceling a permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada.
Read rest at Reuters
Make us depending upon OPEC and those Oil tankers that an run a round and create a Oil Slick that devistates the coast and the Birds and Fish
Xiden will do his best to destroy America’s energy dominance without a thought for jobs and the economy. Because that’s what America hating, Leftist democrat globalists do. Many that voted for the crypt keeper are remorseful now; fools should have known!
I’m a tad surprised that the stocks fell on this news. I would have thought the falls would have already taken place. After all, it was hardly an unexpected outcome. Biden is a disaster for the fossil fuel industry. This is just a portent of things to come.
Buckle in America.
Totally agree . What i will be looking forward to is after he closed down the fossil fuel plants and builds wind and solar that during a cold hard winter when the wind generator blades freeze up and the solar farms are several meters under snow and they are sitting freezing to death . This has happened to the UK last year and recently in Germany who had to get power from Coal powered Poliand. HE HE HA HA
Biden like all liberal Democrats only was to appease the Globalists in the Useless Nations PLO and Greenpeace its politics not science that runs Biden and the Dem-O-Rats