The leader of one of the largest energy producers in the country blasted the Obama administration Monday for carrying out an “all-out war on fossil fuels.”
“The all-out war on fossil fuels waged by this White House over the last eight years has reached tsunami proportions in terms of new regulations being proposed,” Greg Goff, CEO of oil refinery Tesoro, said at the Energy Information Administration’s annual conference in Washington. “Increasingly, views on our industry are polarized along political or other partisan lines — and the facts flung aside,” he added.
Goff told conference’s attendees that it is now time for the oil industry, in one unified voice, tell President Barack Obama and his administration that, “enough is enough.”
The oil industry is getting attacked on one side by an “assault on free speech” being waged by a well-coordinated group of Democratic attorneys general in New York and California, who are aiming to stifle “any dissent to conventional wisdom on the complex issue of climate change.”
The subpoena filed by U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General (AG) Claude Walker against Exxon as part of an anti-racketeering investigation was withdrawn in June. Massachusetts AG Maura Healey’s office also agreed to suspend enforcing her subpoena shortly after Walker ended his.
Federal regulations, Goff added, are also hammering the oil industry.
“This administration’s penchant for overly excessive rulemaking premised on contrived legal authority and policy by executive fiat is starting to be checked by the federal courts,” he said.
The Obama administration is working to finalize more than 2,239 active rules before Obama leaves office.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for instance, etched out a series of regulations on methane emissions from oil and gas drilling, despite emissions from drilling have fallen dramatically even as an increase in oil and gas production. EPA estimates the rule will cost drillers $530 million but create net benefits of $690 million from reducing emissions.
Goff rattled off a list of points the energy industry needs to use in order to defend itself from the regulatory and politically biased volleys tossed its directions — he said that oil gives the country an affordable and reliable sour of energy; the industry also needs to “recognize the unquestionable benefits of our free-market economy”; and any regulation has to be reasoned and balanced so the “energy industry to continue to thrive and to deliver significant benefits to society.”
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