OPINION:
Last week, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and 22 other Senate Democrats sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan demanding to know why oil and gas companies were still in business and why the Biden administration had not arrested the CEOs and sent the workers to reeducation camps.
Just kidding.
They actually sent a letter to the FTC expressing concern that a couple of mergers might cut into the Democrats’ monopoly on making oil and gasoline prices higher.
The truth is that Democrats, particularly those in the Biden administration, are directly responsible for the run-up in oil and gas prices in the last three years. The American Energy Alliance has listed over 175 policies and actions taken by this administration and its pals in Congress that have reduced production and increased the prices of oil and natural gas in these United States.
Keep in mind, these are the very people who plan to require you to buy an electric car or truck and who keep telling us that soon — in the next 10 years or so — the only kind of automobile you will be able to buy will be an electric one, because EVs are the wave of the future.
If that’s true, what conceivable difference could it make whether a few of the dinosaur oil and gas companies want to merge and go into the abyss of bankruptcy and penury holding hands?
The answer is, of course, that Senate Democrats know that we are not going to have an all-electric automobile fleet in the near or distant future. They know that oil demand on this planet and probably in this country is unlikely to peak anytime soon. They know that the energy transition is more aspirational than real.
In short, they know that oil and gas — along with coal — make up about 80% of our energy, just as they have for 50 years and probably as they will for at least another decade or two or three.
They are counting on voters to be completely unaware of the role of the federal government — which they nominally direct — in making energy more expensive. They are counting on voters not to reflect on what affordable and reliable energy enables them to do every day.
Finally — and this may come as a shock — the senators who signed the letter got even rudimentary facts wrong.
For instance, they argue that as a result of Exxon Mobil’s acquisition of Pioneer, consumers would be harmed by the export of American oil. The fact is that U.S. crude oil that is exported to other countries actually protects energy security and helps consumers by lowering the global price of oil.
The senators also seem to be informed by the antiquated notion that the oil industry is the same now as it was 30 years ago. Thirty years ago, the propaganda was that we were running out of oil and natural gas. That nonsense reached its zenith under President Barack Obama, who was fond of saying that we could not drill our way to lower oil prices.
He was spectacularly wrong. Not only could we, we did, and the revolution in precision drilling and well stimulation made the United States the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the world.
Yet the Senate Democrats continue to yearn for the good old days when scarcity of oil and natural gas was the dominant narrative. Fortunately for us, those days are gone for good.
You can’t have it both ways, even if you are a United States senator. You can’t attack an industry and root for its extinction, while demanding that it consistently and affordably produce a resource that is essential to everyone and everything.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times and was previously a deputy assistant for legislative affairs for former President Donald Trump.
