Excerpt from Daily on Energy, Washington Examiner, Feb. 8, 2023

Daily on Energy is written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Jeremy Beaman and Breanne Deppisch, Feb. 8, 2023.

BIDEN SEES A NEED FOR OIL AND GAS FOR A DECADE-PLUS: President Joe Biden’s pronouncement last night that we’re going to need oil and gas for “a while” was met with competing cheers and jeers from attendant lawmakers because it’s the defining question, the pretext of every energy policy debate Washington is undertaking right now.

Biden was making the case against the capital strategies oil majors implemented last year alongside their record-breaking financial performances. They should have plowed more of their earnings into expanding their oil and gas businesses to bring down prices, he argued during the State of the Union address, as he did throughout last year.

“I said, we’re going to need oil for at least another decade. And that’s going to exceed – and beyond that, we’re going to need it. Production,” Biden said, recalling conversations with oil majors.

The Energy Information Administration forecasts petroleum and natural gas to remain the most-consumed sources of energy well beyond the next decade and through 2050.

EIA foresees exponential growth in sales of battery electric and hybrid electric vehicles but expects gasoline to remain the primary transportation fuel through mid-century.

Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group who served in the Bush administration, said Biden’s words reflect a tiptoeing away from “keep it in the ground” and back to “all of the above.”