Neil Chatterjee weighs in on report alleging Pres. Biden plans to block Arctic oil drilling

Bloomberg reporting that President Biden will move to block Arctic oil drilling across roughly half of Alaska’s North Slope. The White House plan would not impact the already approved Conical Phillips Willow project, but it would be far more expansive than originally thought. Let’s bring in Neil Chatterjee to break this down. He is the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Neil, good to see you again. Listen, by the way, there’s also another story today about a, a a giant oil export terminal off the coast of Texas being approved. So that’s being approved. That has environmentalists up in arms. So my guess is this Arctic ban is probably just a a, a PR strategy to block out the other headlines of the oil terminal being approved. What do you think? Yeah, of course. Look, it’s April of 2024. We’re in a presidential election year, and the administration is trying to balance economic growth with placating their base. And they have been struggling with energy politics ever since the Willow decision. They initially approved Willow. They were not ready for the backlash that occurred. So ever since, they’ve been throwing everything they can against the wall, whether it’s the LNG pause or this potential much broader blocking of Arctic oil drilling. But at the same time, they might approve Calcasieu Pass, too. They might, you know, they’re they’re approving this export facility. They just can’t figure out where to land between economic growth and pleasing their environmental because because $5 gasoline across most of America. I’m not looking at you California or Hawaii 5 or Alaska for that matter, $5 gas is terrible for election prospects. So you want energy costs to be low. But when you’ve got millions of people who voted for you because you said you were going to quote phase out fossil fuels and now we’re at record oil production, record LNG production, record LNG exports. I mean I didn’t have that on my my bingo card for the last three years. Neil. Yeah, I mean honestly the the the Biden energy record is like their Frederick and and and whether they intended or not we’re we’re at record levels of production which is why I think they’re now trying to play these kinds of games. Look, Alaska is a red state. They’re not going to get those electoral votes. So they figure why not take a shot at Alaskan production? We can send a signal to our base and not hurt our electoral prospects. Here’s the problem. These projects, whether the LNG pause, which they I think mistakenly think only hits the Gulf, or this decision, which would only hit Alaska, there’s ancillary jobs throughout the economy. There are people, pipe fitters in Wisconsin and Michigan and Ohio, people who make component parts that that work in all these facilities who are also impacted. This is a very short sighted decision.