By mid-January, news sources have thoroughly exhausted reports on American’s Yuletide spending and attention inevitably turns to the day of reckoning: Tax Day.
Right now, members of Congress are debating a series of taxes as part of the multi-trillion-dollar reconciliation package that could make the crude oil that runs through U.S. refineries more expensive.
COVID-19 upended energy markets. Demand disappeared and producers scaled back. Now that economies are reopening, and the demand for goods and services is rebounding, the demand for energy all along the supply chain is increasing, driving up not only the cost of the feedstocks and fuels refineries and petrochemical manufacturers use, but also the cost of the energy used at every step of the supply chain.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – "Federal policy is discouraging supply by shutting down pipelines, putting future production off limits, talking down the future of the petroleum business, and imposing expensive requirements on refineries, chief among them a burdensome Renewable Fuel Standard. The Administration is blaming others when it ought to take a sober look at its own energy policy."
If the Biden Administration is serious about helping consumers, it needs to adopt policies that promote U.S. energy production and refining. A good place to start would be right-sizing RFS mandates.
Limiting California’s access to the exact types of crude oil its facilities need will only increase prices for the state’s consumers and travelers. Drivers are already dealing with gasoline prices in excess of $5 per gallon and the highest fuel taxes of the 50 states. Confining energy producers and consumers to a smaller pool of crude oil will make a very sensitive price environment that much worse.
Government overreach is an issue that strikes a bipartisan chord. For some, the May 19th ruling by a federal appeals court – which eliminates the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) 2015 requirement that hobbyists register their drones – may serve as a badge of freedom from the perpetual gaze of “Big Brother.”
It’s been two and a half years since Congress granted the Department of Homeland Security’s Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program long-term authorization.
As we head into the Memorial Day weekend, a lot of attention is being paid to the price of gasoline. This is no surprise since over 36 million travelers are expected to hit the roads across the country this weekend - at a time when prices for the crude oil used to make fuels are climbing.
