North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer on Thursday told Newsmax that every signal President Joe Biden sends to the marketplace is a negative one "designed to squelch the production" of oil.
"Whether it's, you know killing the pipelines or stop leasing on federal lands, but more importantly the other regulations like the applications for permits to drill on these federal lands have like tripled in the time that it takes to get one," the Republican lawmaker told Newsmax's "Eric Bolling: The Balance."
"And you know Eric, as well as probably anybody in America, this is a very capital intensive industry and you need some medium term and long term certainty to get those investments."
Biden earlier in the day ordered the release of 1 million barrels of oil per day from the nation's strategic petroleum reserve for six months, a bid to control energy prices that have spiked after the United States and allies imposed steep sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
"The bottom line is if we want lower gas prices we need to have more oil supply right now," Biden said. "This is a moment of consequence and peril for the world, and pain at the pump for American families."
The president also wants Congress to impose financial penalties on oil and gas companies that lease public lands but are not producing. He said he will invoke the Defense Production Act to encourage the mining of critical minerals for batteries in electric vehicles, part of a broader push to shift toward cleaner energy sources and reduce the use of fossil fuels.
Cramer says Biden's approach is backward.
"I've never met an oilman that didn't want to produce more. I mean, in many times they really become their own worst enemy because they're built to produce and you give them the right market signals, price signals, and by the way, they'll produce it a lot cleaner than Vladimir Putin is producing it, and that means that they'll bring down greenhouse gas emissions globally by producing more in the United States and making it available to our allies and our customers," said Cramer.
Tapping the stockpile would create pressures that could reduce oil prices, though Biden has twice ordered releases from the reserves without causing a meaningful shift in oil markets. Biden said Thursday he expects gasoline prices could drop "fairly significantly."
"It's a bad idea for a number of reasons," Cramer added.
"Places like North Dakota are a strategic reserve; just allow the innovators and the entrepreneurs to drill it and produce it and you'll bring the supply up and you'll bring the price down without having to tap into what's supposed to be an emergency reserve in the strategic petroleum reserve.
"It's certainly a problem and it's a crisis but it's not an emergency. We should save the reserve for emergencies and use the untapped reserves of the Bakken and the Permian and other major oil-producing areas of the United States and we can do that with some regulatory relief and [the] right capital signals."
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Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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