Energy Expert Lays Out How Free Markets Have Helped The US, At Home And Abroad

Chris White

The head of the U.S.’ biggest oil and natural gas lobby told a crowd of reporters and energy insiders Monday that free energy markets, not government intervention, kick-starts the innovations needed to both wean Americans off foreign oil.

“The worst thing we can do is ask the government to intervene in energy markets,” American Petroleum Institute (API) CEO and President Jack Gerard said at a talk in the District of Columbia.

The free market, he added, has given us new technological innovations allowing the U.S. to wean its way off more traditional, perhaps more damaging fossil fuels. In fact, Gerard added, natural gas extraction has injected so much fuel into the market that it has essentially kept ISIS turmoil, Syrian civil war, and tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia from pitching oil prices into the stratosphere.

Gerard’s comments come after the head of the EPA, Gina McCarthy, wrote in a blog post on Monday that the government — with President Barack Obama at the helm — will be moving forward with gusto on global warming policies in 2016.

“Heading into 2016, EPA is building on a monumental year for climate action—and we’re not slowing down in the year ahead,” McCarthy wrote before highlighting a slew of regulations she intends on placing on the energy industry this year. “So we’re hitting the ground running,” she added.

Wrapping his comments around free market language, Gerard did not hide his contempt for the Clean Power Plan regulations etched out by the EPA and the Obama administration.

“As an industry with more than 100 pending regulations, I would not say that the administration has been very accommodating to me or to the natural gas producers I work for,” Gerard said after a reporter asked him if he thought Obama was treating natural gas producers fairly. “I want a real all-of-the-above energy policy,” not the “keep it in the ground policy” that some ideologues advocate, he told the crowd.

He also highlighted the lifting of the oil ban as a potential boon for Americans consumers, because it “allows the free market to thrive,” Gerard told the crowd, adding, in part, that it makes “for more competition among gas producers, not less.”

Gerard’s comments echo those Nicolas Loris, an economist and fellow at the Heritage Foundation who focuses his studies on environmental regulations, wrote in a post last year on Heritage Foundation’s website.

Despite the treasure trove of success the energy industry has seen over the past couple of years, Loris noted, “America’s energy policy is fraught with problems. The federal government has delayed projects, restricted access, and overregulated industries at great cost.”

Loris went on to lament the government’s willingness to provide “taxpayer-funded subsidies, imposes mandates, and rewards political connectedness and special interests over economic viability.”

He added: “Free energy markets drive innovation and provide the affordable, reliable energy that American families and businesses need.”

When the government intrudes in the energy markets, Gerard said, it mires the argument surrounding natural gas in politics and dogmatism.

“Our goal is to keep the positive momentum of the last few years and to end the politicization of energy for petty partisan ends,” he said about the culture surrounding anti-natural energy proponents, adding, “we want to continue the national energy policy discussion and stay above the partisan fray, and immune from the misinformation campaign deployed by fervid critics of fossil fuels.”

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