​DENVER – Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma will testify at a hearing entitled “Child Care and Other Policy Tools to Combat Bottlenecks and Inflation” before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Policy. Sgamma will discuss the need for the president to reverse course to enable American producers to increase supply and bring down energy prices. The hearing will take place Tuesday, April 26th at 2:30 p.m. ET and is available on the committee’s website.
 
“Climate change policies meant to make energy prices ‘necessarily skyrocket’ achieved their intentions. Energy prices started to rise last year, and the administration started to really feel the heat last summer. The first reaction was to ask Russia and OPEC to increase their production in June. The policies meant to overregulate American oil and natural gas production continued,” said Sgamma. “When Russia and OPEC failed to heed that request, we in the American oil and natural gas industry made the case that we would be happy to increase production, but for policies specifically designed to prevent us from doing so. Still the policies continued.

• Interior announces oil and natural gas leasing just before leaving for the Passover and Easter weekend
• The administration introduces yet more policies that further depress American production and keep gasoline prices high
• BLM violated federal law by not holding lease sales for the past five quarters

 
DENVER – In response to the Department of the Interior’s announcement just before the holiday weekend that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will soon hold onshore oil and natural gas lease sales for 173 parcels on roughly 144,000 acres, Western Energy Alliance today issued the statement below attributable to President Kathleen Sgamma.
 
“While we’re glad to see BLM is finally going to announce a sale, the extreme reduction of acreage by 80%, after a year and a quarter without a single sale, is unwarranted and does nothing to show that the administration takes high energy prices seriously,” said Sgamma. “The sales being considered were the ones that had already been fully analyzed at the end of the Trump Administration and were ready to go before the Biden Administration decided to redo the analysis. Career employees at BLM, not political appointees, had done that analysis and determined it was protective. This administration has decided to make leasing and production a political football, and Americans are paying the price at the pump. 

DENVER – Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma will testify at a hearing entitled “Ensuring Transparency in Petroleum Markets” before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Sgamma will discuss the need for the president to reverse course to enable American producers to increase supply and bring down energy prices. The hearing will take place Tuesday, April 5th at 10:00 a.m. ET and is available on the committee’s website.
 
“Since before taking office, President Biden has been clear that his climate change agenda is a zero-sum relationship with the American oil and natural gas industry; action on climate change meant a diminishment of American oil and natural gas,” said Sgamma. “From day one with the cancelation of the Keystone pipeline followed a week later by the leasing ban, this administration was intent on restricting American oil and natural gas. On federal lands and waters where the federal government has the most control, he has pledged eliminating it altogether.