We were glad to see the automakers are finally standing up for the internal combustion engine (ICE).  Filing comments on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards as the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, several major automakers blasted the rule and requested major changes. NHTSA proposed boosting fuel standards 2% per year for passenger cars and 4% for pickup trucks and SUVs from 2027 through 2032. The American Automotive Policy Council, which represents the Detroit Three automakers, estimates automakers would face more than $14 billion in non-compliance penalties between 2027 and 2032, thereby increasing average vehicles prices by $3,000.

Our friends at the Institute for Energy Research have a running list of the ways the Biden Administration has suppressed American oil and natural gas. We’d like to focus on just one of the 176 we’re dealing with, a Resource Management Plan (RMP) amendment for public lands on the West Slope of Colorado. The RMP would close 1.566 million acres to oil and natural gas leasing. The justification? These lands have “no-known, low, or medium potential” for oil and natural gas, or so BLM would have you believe.
 
BLM is basing its resource assessment on a 2002 U.S. Geologic Survey (USGS) study, well before technological advances and the shale revolution that has unlocked huge resources from shales like the Mancos found in western Colorado. BLM blithely dismisses the need to update its assessment because, and we’re not kidding, “geology remains constant.”