(The Center Square) – Lawmakers will grill President Joe Biden’s Energy secretary at a newly announced oversight hearing scheduled for Thursday.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is expected to face lawmakers for questions amid elevated gas prices, a depleted strategic petroleum reserve, and ongoing criticism of Biden’s energy policies.
According to AAA, the average national price for a gallon of unleaded gasoline is $3.60 per gallon, down slightly in recent weeks but up from the same time last year. The average price for a gallon of gas when Biden took office was about $2.40 nationally.
“Under Secretary Granholm’s leadership, the Department of Energy has implemented radical policies and unchecked regulations in an effort to wage a war against American-made energy production and cement far-left Green New Deal priorities,” U.S. Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., who chairs the committee holding the hearing, said in a statement.
International conflicts during Biden’s term have exacerbated the problem. Russia is a major energy exporter, but its invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions have complicated global energy markets.
At the same time, a potential expansion of the Israel-Hamas war into a broader Middle East conflict could significantly impact gas prices.
While gas prices are elevated, they are below the all-time record average of over $5 per gallon of unleaded gasoline seen earlier in Biden’s term. To respond to those prices, Biden released a large portion of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves, meant for emergencies like a war or national disaster.
Now, the reserves are at the lowest point in decades.
“It’s clear the Department of Energy has been operating behind closed doors for far too long and it has left Americans in the dark about the Department’s misuse of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, pause on liquified natural gas exports, and increased spending levels,” Comer said. “The Oversight Committee is prepared to shine a light on the Biden Administration’s disastrous policies and will continue to work to hold Secretary Granholm accountable.”
Energy prices overall have risen markedly since Biden took office and have helped fuel the spike in inflation during his term.
Last week, the Biden administration proposed blocking new coal mines on federally owned lands in Powder River Basin, a major coal-producing region in the U.S.
Biden immediately took fire for that proposal, the latest effort to curtail domestic energy production as the White House cites climate change concerns.
“The Biden administration continues to attack domestic energy production and make America weaker and more reliant on foreign energy sources,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, wrote on X in response to the announcement. “Electricity prices have risen by 30% since Biden took office. So why is he reversing a Trump land use decision? Because this administration is more focused on appeasing radical environmentalists than creating pragmatic policy.
“We desperately need a change in administration and a return to the Trump policies that ensured American had access to clean, reliable, and affordable energy,” he added.
All these concerns will likely come up during the Congressional hearing.
Biden has also taken fire for pausing issuing permits for new natural gas export sites at the beginning of this year. A coalition of two dozen states sent a letter to the Biden administration blasting his decision and calling it unlawful. A group of about 150 Republicans expressed similar concerns.
The committee’s announcement of the hearing suggested that topic would be front and center as well.
“The Committee has ongoing investigations into the Biden Administration’s pause on new liquified natural gas export permits, Secretary Granholm’s summer 2023 electric vehicle road trip, jet-setting activities of the Special Envoy for Climate Office, creation of the American Climate Corps, historic depletion of the SPR, and burdensome and expensive EPA rulemakings,” the Republican-led committee said in its announcement.
Like she really cares. She probably getting hush money from the gasoline industry.
Name one govt official, NOT getting kick backs?
Uh, let’s see. How about – NO I guess. Oh. the guy in the WH – never mind. The demoncrat leader in Congress – now that was dumb. I guess the answer is NONE.
Anti-Socialist Margaret Thatcher stated that “Sooner or later you do run out of other people’s money”,,, like Joe Biden has run out of using the American Strategic oil reserve to drive down the gas prices BEFORE his next election, which got emptied to win the mid-terms. Who and what you turn to in times of crisis defines who and what you worship. These democrat government worshippers of power and personal prestige, stolen in government redistribution of honest earned American energy and life force now squander the very economic life force of that makes America stand above, with the subversive corruption that takes America down. Democrat Party primacy over a now disunited disempowered Country has become such an obvious end game for this party of perverters now revealed, that only the walking brain dead cannot see the democrat party America death march now in process. First, they take our American moral life force in immoral proffering’s of confused sexual identities and immediate sexual gratifications, family structures destroyed, then they take away the energy force that allowed America to rise above, with the economic surpluses that used to be CREATED in the image of our CREATOR, now gone with the wind, by whining woke American destructive sleeper cells implanted within our own government. How they must hate our American principles and people to want to cripple the very petroleum-based strength that empowers an entire nation.
is she kin to pochahontas warren?
President Joe Biden’s Energy secretary Jennifer Granholm is exactly like Alejandro Mayorkas United States Secretary of Homeland Security.
Totally useless and obedient puppets, just like the sock-puppet president Joe Barack OBiden. They don’t think, they just obey their treasonous Democrat Party’s elite masters. When you have a corrupt treasonous, destructive, unethical political party dictating policies, then you get corrupt treasonous, destructive, unethical puppet administrators.
NAMe one biden (OR even obama) pic, that HAS ACTUALLY BEEN GOOD in their job?
“At the same time, a potential expansion of the Israel-Hamas war into a broader Middle East conflict could significantly impact gas prices.”
But Joe Biden has asked Ukraine not to attack Russian energy targets, assuring us of a source of foreign fuel, while supporting Russia…
Wait, aren’t the Russians on Donald Trump’s payroll?
I’m confused.