The Biden Administration is no friend of the oil and gas industry…
Here’s the lie: the Biden Administration has approved more oil drilling permits than the Trump Administration. The reality: Biden & Co. have approved 1,000 fewer drilling permits, according to documents shared with the House Natural Resources Committee by the Interior Department.
This fake talking point — that Biden has approved more permits than his “Drill, Baby, Drill” predecessor — has been rolled out again and again to mitigate concerns that the Biden Administration isn’t rapidly and recklessly forcing Americans to adopt Green New Deal policies.
“From the beginning, the Biden administration has waged a war on domestic energy producers. Despite claims to the contrary, his administration has not permitted more oil and gas drilling permits than the previous administration,” a House Natural Resources Committee spokesman told the Free Beacon. “Despite having the worst leasing records in U.S. history, the Department of the Interior has attempted to take credit for record oil and gas production which is occurring on lands leased under previous administrations.”
In other words, Biden is taking credit for Trump’s oil production initiatives.
“Even more unsettling, the Department is providing different data to journalists than to Congress,” the spokesman continued. “These kinds of discrepancies are troubling, but like a bad ex-boyfriend, this administration continues to gaslight and mislead the public for their own political gain.”
According to The Free Beacon, “The Bureau of Land Management’s public online data portal shows that, in 2023, the Biden administration approved 3,377 applications for permits to drill on federal lands, 25 percent more than the 2,507 applications the Trump administration approved in its third year. That flurry of permit approvals, according to the data, brought the Biden administration’s three-year total to 9,522 approved permits, significantly more than the 6,541 it says the Trump administration approved in its first three years.”
But now we know that data — data that was widely cited in left-leaning publications — is incorrect and misleading, thanks to the documents obtained by the House Natural Resource Committee tell a different story.
Between fiscal year 2018 and fiscal year 2019 alone, the Trump administration approved 6,569 drill permits. That’s larger than the three-year figure published in The Bureau of Land Management’s database. Between fiscal year 2018 and fiscal year 2020, the Trump administration approved 10,795 permits.
That’s more than the Biden Administration’s 9,522 approved in its first three years.
Another Biden Admin talking point debunked.
