The Climate-Friendly Solution Is More U.S. Oil, Not Less: U.S. Republicans

On the sidelines of COP27 this week, U.S. House Republicans are arguing that additional crude oil production from the United States will be necessary to meet global oil demand—and better for the climate than the alternatives, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

At the UN climate summit in Egypt, U.S. Republicans have argued that the cleanest oil in the world comes from the United States. 

“If we are going to be increasing global demand of oil and gas we must ensure that the extraction, exploration and production activities are occurring in places where we have the lowest emissions per unit of energy, which is largely in the United States in the Gulf of Mexico,” Lousiana Republican Representative Garret Graves said on the sidelines of COP27.

World leaders have become a bit more receptive to the notion that fossil fuels may play a role in energy’s future—and a prominent one at that—now that the energy crisis has muted the rallying cry for immediate climate intervention in the way of a complete and speedy shift towards renewables. If indeed the world is to need more oil, the Republicans argued, it should come from the United States, where it can be produced more cleanly, with less of an impact on the climate.

The issue of methane emissions from fossil fuel extractions has found itself on President Biden’s hit list this week, with new plans to tighten regulations against methane emissions from domestic oil and gas drilling—which were unveiled at COP27. According to the EPA, the proposed standards will reduce methane from oil and gas by 87% below 2005 levels.