Source: United States Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND)
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WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, joined Eric Bolling The Balance on Newsmax to discuss soaring gas prices and President Biden’s plan to release 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Excerpts and the full video are below.
On Oil Releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve
“It’s a bad idea for a number of reasons. Places like North Dakota are a strategic reserve. [If you] just allow the innovators and entrepreneurs to drill it and produce it, you’ll bring the supply up and the price down without having to tap into what’s supposed to be an emergency reserve in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.”
“A lot of that reserve was purchased by Donald Trump for darn near nothing. He took advantage when the prices of oil were really low to fill the reserve. Now the emergency they’re claiming is not really an emergency. It’s certainly a problem, but it’s not an emergency. We should save the reserve for emergencies and use the untapped reserves of the Bakken, Permian, and other major oil-producing areas in the United States. We can do that with some regulatory relief and the right capital signals.”
On Soaring Gas Prices
“When you look at the policies, you can see exactly why. Every signal that Joe Biden sends to the marketplace is a negative signal. It’s designed to squelch production, whether it’s killing the pipelines or stopping leasing on federal lands. But more importantly, the other regulations like the Applications for Permits to Drill on federal lands have tripled in the time that it takes to get one. This is a very capital-intensive industry. You need some medium-term and long-term certainty to get those investments.”
“Oilmen are built to produce. If you give them the right market signals, they’ll produce. By the way, they’ll produce it a lot cleaner than Vladimir Putin is producing it. This means they’ll bring down greenhouse gas emissions globally by producing more in the United States and making it available to our allies.”