Non-ethanol gas in Oklahoma City is $4.13. It was $4.25. Man, it went down a lot! #sarcasm
I shouldn’t complain because I know others have it worse. But still. Anything over $3 a gallon is a bit much for Oklahoma.
It might get worse because President Joe Biden ended a policy that makes millions of acres in Alaska unavailable for oil drilling.
In 2020, President Donald Trump’s administration left 18.5 million acres open in Alaska’s Natural Petroleum Reserve out of the total 22.8 million acre site for oil drilling.
The Bureau of Land Management decided to only leave 11.8 million acres (52%) of the land open. No one can touch the remaining 11 million acres (48%).
So over half of the site remains open but considering gas prices are through the roof and Russia is holding its energy sources hostage it’s time to drill baby drill!
BLM said the closure must happen “to protect and conserve important surface resources and uses in these areas.”
BLM even closed off an “area recognized as having high potential for oil discovery and development and therefore would be likely to be impacted if available to fluid mineral leasing and new construction.”
Yeah, let’s cut off a prime area. BLM claimed the area is important to numerous animals. All in the name of climate change, too:
By reducing the total amount of land in the NPR-A that is available to fluid mineral leasing and new infrastructure, the plan adopted by this Decision will likely result in less leasing over time. Depending upon the degree of development that may have occurred with increased leasing, this could result in reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to the plan under the 2020 IAP/ROD. While the adoption of this plan itself does not directly generate GHG emissions, such emissions are a reasonably foreseeable consequence of making available lands within the NPR-A to oil and gas leasing and development. As such, adoption of this plan supports the administration and department’s commitment to addressing climate change by reducing the amount of land within the NPR-A that is available to fluid mineral leasing.
The Alaskan senators are not pleased:
U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said the decision will not help Americans.”This decision will prolong the pain for hard-working Americans and tighten Vladimir Putin’s grip over our allies,” Sullivan said in a joint statement with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. “Needless to say, President Biden is not doing everything in his power to control prices at the pump or relieve average Americans’ pain. We now know, record inflation, unprecedented gas prices, and a despot wielding vast sums of the world’s petroleum supply will not deter Joe Biden in his relentless war on American energy production.”It’s the wrong decision, Murkowski said.”We need more domestic resource development, and areas explicitly designated for that purpose should be at the top of the list, not on the chopping block,” Murkowski said in a statement. “This decision also flies in the face of many of the Alaska Natives who live on the North Slope, who participated in the 2020 plan update and who supported its finalization. The administration is choosing to ignore them, while giving outside environmental groups everything they want.”
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