Why Big Oil Is Less Worried about Biden Phasing out Fossil Fuels

by Timothy Puko (Washington Post) For industry executives, the president’s slower approach is evidence that pragmatism is winning out. Climate activists are less than pleased.

Oil and gas industry leaders say they’ve seen a big shift in tone from the Biden administration over the past year, helping to smooth over one of the president’s rockiest relationships.

Just two weeks before election night in 2020, President Biden dropped a bomb on fossil fuel businesses while debating the incumbent Donald Trump. “I would transition from the oil industry. Yes,” he said. “It has to be replaced by renewable energy — over time. Over time.”

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But in the past year, the Biden administration has resumed oil leasing under terms of the major climate-and-energy-spending law Biden signed last year. The president has backed up his previous support for more new laws to speed up infrastructure permitting, including for natural-gas pipelines. And, to avoid instability emanating from Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the Biden administration promised to help grow U.S. natural gas exports and spearheaded efforts to get more gas to European allies.

The president’s more cautious approach toward phasing out fossil fuels culminated last month at his State of the Union address.

“We’re going to need oil for at least another decade … and beyond that,” Biden said, recalling what he has told industry leaders. “We’re going to need it.”

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She (Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm) reiterated Biden’s comments that the country will still use fossil fuels in the middle of the century, but implored people in the room to develop the technology that allows people to burn it without releasing greenhouse-gas emissions.

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Toby Rice, chief executive of the largest U.S. natural gas producer, EQT, credits the administration for supporting money in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act for carbon capture, a technology he says is an imperative for eliminating the oil and gas industry’s emissions. READ MORE

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