Stephen Moore explains for Investor’s Business Daily readers why the Obama administration’s proposed energy rules could prove harmful to the American economy.
The Obama administration has just announced it will issue at least six new major rules directed at the oil and gas industry — an energy strategy that only the member nations of OPEC and Vladimir Putin could love.
The rules would, among other things, curtail methane emissions from natural gas and oil, place new restrictions on fracking, impose further limits on Arctic drilling and impose new safety standards on rail tanker cars.
Never mind that the oil and gas industry has to rely on rail to transport petroleum because Obama has blocked the far cleaner and more efficient alternative of moving oil and gas through pipelines.
More important, these are the kinds of mindless regulations out of this White House that could trip up the economy just as it’s showing signs of new life.
The oil and gas industry has carried the rest of the economy on its shoulders for the last six years. But with prices falling, drillers are struggling to keep operations running. Thanks to the boom in shale oil and gas, oil prices have dropped by nearly 50% since the summer. New drilling permits are falling and some marginal wells are already shutting down.
The decline in energy prices is a windfall benefit for the U.S. economy of an estimated $150 billion a year. But drillers must try to tough it out, and somehow earn what are now razor-thin profits.
Could there be a worse time for new EPA regulations to raise the cost of producing our domestic energy? Obviously, the answer is no, but this isn’t collateral damage; it’s the very point of the regulatory onslaught.