FACT CHECK: Rep. Cindy Axne Asserts 'No Logic' Behind Claim Biden's Green Policies Hurting Oil Production

CLAIM: Rep. Cindy Axne (D-IA) asserted that there is “no logic” behind the claim that the Biden administration’s green policies are causing havoc on oil companies and their production.

VERDICT: False.

During a radio interview last week with Let’s Talk Guthrie County, Rep. Axne claimed that there is “no logic” to the claim that President Biden wreaked havoc on oil companies and their production when he enacted his green policies and signed executive orders in his first week of office.

Of course, as the Biden administration pushes a world that doesn’t use oil, it makes oil investment scarcer. As gas prices have increased, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg suggested that Americans struggling with high gas prices switch to electric vehicles to save money.

Since being in office, Biden has taken aim at American energy independence. He has canceled the Keystone XL Pipeline, suspended oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters, halted federal support for oil and gas projects overseas, and suspended oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

In fact, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the administration would not impose a ban on crude oil exports as Biden waived the sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a move which would reduce American energy exports. The Ukrainians claim lifting the sanctions on Nord Stream 2 is one of the reasons the Russians have invaded Ukraine.

Biden’s “marque legislation,” the Build Back Better Act, targeted the oil, natural gas, and refining industries in the United States. The legislation would have “increased bonding requirements, royalty rates, and fees while restricting access to energy resources in Alaska and on the Outer Continental Shelf for oil and gas development,” stated Katie Tubb, a policy analyst at the Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Oil companies are “trying to reposition for the long term” since the administration is looking for ways to put them out of business. Due to this, oil production has not been able to keep up with demand in the United States.

In December, before the price of oil and gas skyrocketed to record highs, Tubb wrote in her commentary for the Heritage Foundation:

To state it more bluntly, the Biden administration and its allies in Congress have made it very clear that they intend to put the oil industry in America out of business. What does it look like to “work together” with an administration that promised “to get rid of fossil fuels” and advised that oil company executives be “thrown in jail”?

If that is the future Granholm is working toward, who can blame American companies for being hesitant to invest hundreds of thousands to billions of dollars in exploration, equipment, and employees to produce oil?

So far, the Biden administration has tried to relieve the political pressure of gasoline prices that are the highest they’ve been since 2014 by trying to cajole more production from OPEC+ countries, releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and investigating the oil industry for price gouging.

“The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s International Energy Outlook projects no scenario in which global demand for oil does not increase through at least 2050,” Tubb added. “But the Biden administration seems determined that none of that oil will be produced in the United States.”

Rep. Axne is running for reelection to Congress in the midterm elections.

Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter.

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