Boyle asked Macchiarola about the significance of Biden revoking the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline and putting a 60-day pause on federal land leasing in his first days in office.
“We’ve produced lower household energy costs as a result of U.S. energy and less reliance on foreign energy sources,” Macchiarola added.
“The president has a choice to make: He can maintain U.S. leadership and maintain and support our economic recovery with American energy or he can pursue policies that destroy jobs and at the same time increase energy imports,” he further asserted.
As Breitbart News reported, shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline will cost 11,000 jobs directly and as many as 60,000 indirect jobs.
The federal ban presents an even more staggering number, Macchiarola asserted.
“The full scale ban of development on federal lands you can bet the impact could be up to a million jobs in the United States,” he said.
The Keystone decision also affects our relationship with Canada and the U.S. economy.
It could also cost the U.S. $2 billion in wages, he said.
“This shale revolution has unlocked resources that we never thought we’d be able to get to and that’s meant more jobs in the United States, lower energy costs and greater energy security,” Macchiarola said.
“For the first time in 2019 in 67 years [the U.S.] became a net exporter of energy rather than a net importer,” he noted. “That’s a huge deal. And abandoning federal leasing heads in a different direction.”
“That’s the difference between energy independence and energy security and reliance on foreign sources,” Macchiarola said.
He cited the irony of Biden’s nomination of Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM) to serve as secretary of the Department of the Interior.
Half of the energy produced in New Mexico comes from federal land and two thirds of the natural gas in the state comes from federal land.
API produced a study last year that showed a federal land ban could cost up to 5 percent of all jobs in the state.
“These decisions are sweeping,” Macchiarola said. “They’re broad and they will really have negative impacts on our economy and our labor market at really the worst possible time.”
“If [Biden’s] priority is to bring back jobs in the United States and to grow our economy then they really need to rethink these policies, particularly the policy with respect to a leasing bans on federal lands for oil and gas development.”